At its peak, the tulip mania that engulfed the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century resulted in hugely inflated prices – with single bulbs apparently selling for small fortunes. Of course it all ended badly when the ‘tulip bubble’ burst and many people were left bankrupt. Thankfully, tulips today are modestly-priced and there are plenty of opportunities at Keukenhof’s many retail outlets to purchase any of the bulbs on display – or in fact a just about anything from a wide-variety of tulip-inspired merchandise: neck ties (extraordinary), scarfs, handbags, jewellery, serviettes, tissues – you get the idea. If you can put a tulip on it, it’s for sale at Keukenhof.

So photogenic – the husband’s not bad either!

We could have capitalised on another popular Keukenhof activity – particularly among Japanese tourists: what to do after taking several hundred tulip photographs? Take pictures of all the dogs in the gardens of course! Especially handsome ginger dogs! Zoly could have earned our entry fee back easily today if we’d charged €1 for every picture taken of him. Everywhere we went we were asked. The Japanese tourists were particularly keen, which was ever so slightly nerve-wracking as I kept thinking that it would probably only take a good tail wag from Zoly to knock some of these very petite Japenese tourists off their feet and into the nearest flower bed or water feature, (also, he has been known to jump up at people when he’s overexcited and send them flying). Fortunately everyone stayed standing this morning.

You can imagine the looks we got

The best Zoly-shot of the day, though, was taken by me. I call it ‘Delft Lovers’ a sort of homage to Banksy and Delft pottery in one – I’m sure it will go viral!