Gladly Wandering: Amstetrdam : Flower Market Love

So one thing The Netherlands is famous for is that it's the worlds floral producer for Europe. It's also home to the largest green house in the world and has the largest flower market in the world which is the size of 120 football fields.

Aalsmeer in North Holland is home to the largest flower market. Daily, auctioneers will come in the morning to do their biddings before those flowers are packed and sent to florists all around.

It sells an average of 21 million flowers daily. Whoaa!!

Now that is business.

One amazing place which I failed to visit was the famous Keukenhof, not far away from the city of Amsterdam. Keukenhof is only open during the blooming season which is in March till May. For the rest of the year, keukenhof is closed to the public. Keukenhof is the worlds largest flower garden and has fields and fields of everycolor tulip you could ever imagine. If ever you might travel to Europe at any of those months, Keukenhof will be a great place to visit especially for flower lovers. They have a flower parade every year in April when the flowers are the prettiest.

Pics taken from Google.

Unfortunately, I only had time to visit Amsterdam in summer. And when the weather's not at it's best either. It was raining daily like it was autumn and the sky was grey most of the time. I did have a chance to meet the flowers in the flower market.

Being a flower market, it does not only sell flowers. It sells everything that has to do with flowers, plants and its industry. Also, it does not sell only local plants. They do sell tropical plants too! I was quite surprised to see bougainvillas and monkey cups here. Something that's very tropical. Very common back home due to the weather. But again, Amsterdam shows me that nothing is impossible.

One thing the do sell a lot here would be tulip bulbs. They are in abundace!! These bulbs can be bought and brought back with a valid certificate. Or as they say. I'm not so sure. I've read in forums that they are some countries that still reject the bulbs even with the certificate. And there are every other plant seeds you can ever imagine. Tangerine, Watermelon, Chilli, Lemon, Sunflower and etc. I bought a 4€ flower bulb which supposedly doesn't require water, soil or sunlight to grow. And it grows in autumn. So far the flowers are budding! Amazing creatures.

Along the floating flower market, (ouh forgot to tell you that its floating) there are lots of souvenir shops, traditional cheese shops and special shops, for example The Magic Mushroom. Dare you to go on a psychedelic ride? No hash is allowed to be sold in shops. Only Coffeeshops. I'll post on that another time.