I have been wanting to go to Keukenhof since I heard about it a few years ago. I was finally able to book things far enough out that we could go. Keukenhof is amazing and I can’t wait to go back.

Our first time at Keukenhof was on Easter Sunday. We had pre bought the bus/entrance tickets. The bus in Haarlem picks you up at the train station. They have signs telling you where to go and it was easy to find. The busses are supposed to come at scheduled times, but they were always off. The general rule seems to be that when one bus leaves it takes about 30 minutes or so for the next to show up. The bus drops you off right at the entrance to Keukenhof.

I had looked at a map but wasn’t really sure where to go. I had read that the windmill was to the right, so we headed that way. It was super crowded, so we just wandered around a bit. I had really wanted to find the part where you can walk across the water, as I have seen tons of posts about that. We did end up finding it on our first visit.

It was all a bit overwhelming. I knew it was a big place, but it was even bigger than I thought. Everything had long lines, so we mostly just wandered around. We had a free day later in our trip and decided that we wanted to go to Keukenhof again. It was easy to pre buy the tickets for the bus and park again. We went a bit earlier this time (on Easter we went at 10:30 and on our second trip at 9:30) and the bus was completely full, so we had to stand. I thought that the park would be a bit less crowded, but it wasn’t. This time when we went into the park we went left and we saw a bunch of stuff we had missed the first time.

The lines were a bit better, and since it was our last day of the trip I think we just didn’t want to leave. We were both okay with waiting in lines on the second visit. We ended up going up the windmill and we went on a canal cruise of Keukenhof. The second time we ended up staying for over 6 hours because we were waiting for our time on the canal tour. It was a long day at the park, but I feel like we saw a good amount of things. I know we didn’t see 100% but we saw a lot.

Sofia really loved it there, and so did I. One obvious thing I hadn’t considered was the smell. It smelled so good there. They had some decent food options too. Some of it was pretty expensive, but then they also had some snacks and smaller things. Sofia was a big fan of the fries and the ice cream. We both can’t wait to go back to Keukenhof and I’m curious to see how it changes each year.