Where fresh flowers are a luxury in most parts of the world, they are on every street corner in Amsterdam. Literally. And cheap too: a nice bouquet will set only you back around 7 euros. This ties nicely into the fact that we like things to be cheap.

Tulips

Jokes aside, the quality of flowers in .nl is awesome and we are lucky because of it. The florists have been very succesful at marketing the message that you “say it with flowers” (zeg het met bloemen, since replaced by the current slogan gek op bloemen – crazy about flowers). Hordes of tourists come to our Keukenhof, which really is quite spectacular to see. Every other year an event called the Floriade is held, showcasing old and current flowers in a big way.

Marketplace

The biggest marketplace for flowers is called Flora Holland. This is an auction where grower meets wholesale. The scale of this operation is immense: every day at 5 AM or so a fleet of trucks comes in and unloads the flowers, the same day a different fleet leaves the terrain and ships the flowers worldwide. The fact that they are immediate neighbours of our largest airport Schiphol helps, too. On a smaller scale, flowers can be purchased on regular markets, in supermarkets, gas stations and on just about every streetcorner in large city centers. Amsterdam even has it’s own flower market (Google Image Search) where you can buy either fresh cut flowers or bulbs, ready to be taken on your airplane home.

Pink Gerbera

So where do all these flowers grow? During spring and summer, huge polders near Aalsmeer and Lisse are dedicated to flowers. Funny thing though. The flowers themselves are cut and discarded. It’s the bulbs they are after. This is the reason this part of Holland is called “bulb area” (bollenstreek). The flowers you can buy are also grown in the bollenstreek, but not on such a massive scale. You can buy flowers throughout the year in Netherlands, and this means in winter they are grown in greenhouses.

If there is something Nederlanders do, it’s building bridges. No wonder with a country that’s more water than land. And cities that have more canals than Venice! (Not sure if that is actually true, but it sounds dramatic.) And if you think having the longest bicycle-bridge in the world is outlandish, wait ’till you’ve seen one of the many bridges in the busiest highways.

I will cover Nederlands’ bridges more than once on this blog, but the two I have lined up for this episode are one of the most eye-catching stuff we have.

Bruggen van Amsterdam

Bridges over the Leidsegracht, Amsterdam

No, not in bruges, but in Amsterdam is where you will find the bridges you know from postcards. If you look at the picture above, that is just one snapshot I took earlier without paying much attention to what I was shooting. These brick bridges are everywhere in Amsterdam, and the best thing is that they are essential to life in the city.

The bridges connect all parts of Amsterdam and urban, every day life would be impossible without them. Cars, bicycles, trucks, tourists, it all crosses these bridges countless times every day. They are well-maintained, painted, cleaned and in daily use. I know what you’re thinking. How quaint! And that is exactly what it is. You could also say how gezellig they are. But you would be wrong. There is nothing gezellig about bridges, they are just there as part of the road. We need them to cross the enormous amounts of water we have.

The bicycle bridge

Nescio Bridge, the biggest bicycle bridge of the world, east of Amsterdam

A friend of mine showed me this little gem (above): the Nescio Brug, the longest bicycle-only bridge in the world (see this beautiful shot on Flickr). “Nescio”, Latin for “I don’t know”, was the pseudonym of the Dutch writer Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh, born June 22, 1882 in Amsterdam. You mount this little puppy on your bike and are given a wonderful view of the IJ lake and the IJburg residential development. Then back down where it’s a half-hour trip to the center of Amsterdam.

This part of .nl, although decidedly flat, can be starting point for many great bicycle rides through polders and former lakes, now dry and developed for farming. Green grass, blue skies and black/wite Friesland cows, this area between Amsterdam and, well, Germany boasts some of the most typical Dutch views you will ever find. Who said this country was boring? (I did.)

The view on the polders, and bridges in actual highways, will be covered in an upcoming post.