The Hague to Keukenhof

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We set our alarms for 8 AM. We packed up, showered, ate breakfast with our hosts and headed out. We ended up paying only 5 Euros for parking which was a small victory. We asked for directions to Amsterdam since we no longer trusted Tomtom.
We finally started listening to Tomtom after we got on the highway and drove for 45 min to Keukenhof, the famous tulip garden park of the Netherlands. This park is only open for a month and a half throughout the whole year, when the tulips are in full bloom from April to mid May. Tomtom tried to thwart our plans again when we got to the town of Lisse but we were able to navigate with the road signs and follow the rest of the tourists to successfully locate Keukenhof.
We were greeted to the tulip gardens by two ladies in traditional Dutch clothing. There was a snack stand on either side of the walkway, one selling fresh strawberries and the other selling bratwurst hotdogs. We were surrounded by mostly Asian tourists. We were given a map and started wandering around the gardens. The tulips were mostly in full bloom and in all different colors. I was surprised at how good they looked given the terrible weather on the previous day.
The pictures can do a better job of describing the scenery than me. The weather got very bad around 1 PM and it hailed for about 15 minutes. We got soaked and Lise was cold pretty much the rest of the day. We ate lunch in the park (asian noodles for me and an egg salad sandwich for Lise) and then headed out for Amsterdam.
The drive to Amsterdam lasted about 1 hour. Tomtom took us on the "scenic route" on the way out of Keukenhof which actually worked out very well. We were taken around the small roads on which the tulip bulb growing farms exist.

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