March 31, 2003--If you think the Internet stock bubble was insane, take a moment and consider the humble tulip. During the 1620s and 1630s, financial speculators in Holland went mad over the brightly-colored flowers: at one point in 1633, a farmhouse was traded for three tulip bulbs. The "tulip bubble" collapsed in 1637, leaving speculators bankrupt, but Holland has continued its love affair with tulips to this day.
The ultimate tulip paradise is the Keukenhof Gardens (www.keukenhof.com/english), a 70-acre field outside the Dutch town of Lisse. The garden was founded in 1949 as a way for Holland's commercial tulip firms to show off their wares and has developed into a vast floral fantasia. Each of Holland's more than 90 tulip growers plants their own patch, and the colors can be overwhelming. Orchids, begonias, hyacinths and daffodils also abound; the garden sports seven themed areas, a café and ten indoor exhibitions.
This year, the Keukenhof is open from now until May 15. The peak of the 2003 tulip season will come around April 15, according to Marianne van Duyn, spokeswoman for the gardens. (The Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center notes that tulips are typically in bloom as late as May 5.)
Flower fans who are around on April 26 get to see the annual Flower Parade, where floats bedecked with millions of blooms make their way from Lisse to the town of Haarlem, near Amsterdam. For more information on the parade, click here.
If the brilliant colors inspire you to plant your own field of tulips, you'll need some patience--tulip bulbs are only available in the fall. You can order top-quality bulbs at the Keukenhof any time of year, but they won't be shipped out until the season arrives.
To get to the Keukenhof, take one of the frequent trains from Amsterdam to Leiden (a trip of about 40 minutes) and then switch for a 15-minute bus ride to the gardens. The park is open daily from 8 am to 7:30 pm, and tickets are €11.50 for adults and €5.50 for children. Dutch railway stations sell combined rail/bus/admission tickets.
As the Keukenhof are so close to Amsterdam, it's perfectly easy to visit the gardens as a day trip. But if you'd like to stay in the charming university city of Leiden instead, Frommer's recommends the Hotel de Doelen (www.dedoelen.com), where double rooms go for €90-€125. From Leiden's train station, the #54 bus whisks you to Keukenhof.
For trips on short notice like this, Site59 (www.site59.com) is a good resource for low fares. But if you buy no later than midnight tonight, you can take advantage of two excellent sales from Lufthansa and Icelandair. Icelandair's sale, which ends today, is detailed a previously published Frommers.com article here. As for Lufthansa, for tickets purchased by March 31, departing April 1-14 and returning by April 30, round-trip fares are as low as $215 plus tax (usually around $100) from Philadelphia and $296 plus tax from Dallas; we also found a trip from New York on Expedia.com that combined the Lufthansa sale with a low American Airlines fare for a total of $346, including tax.