Holland

My mom offered us an overnight getaway, and we chose Holland, MI.  It just so happened that our timeline aligned with the Tulip Festival.  So, last weekend, we packed up and made the drive "out west" to visit the historically Dutch settlement.

We stopped in Portland on the way.  We had seen an advertisement for a waterfront café, and since we were not in a rush, stopped to check it out.  Sadly, they didn't have patio dining, and were very short staffed.  The food was on par with a small town diner.  The view from their parking lot was beautiful though.

 

We arrived in Holland around 2pm, but they were able to check us in early!  Our room had a very novel set up.  You see the closet upon entry,

and on the back side of the closet is the bed!

View of Holland from our room.  Looks like many Michigan cities.

Once we settled in, we decided to explore.  I picked up a "scavenger hunt" pamphlet in the lobby, which kept us entertained most of our trip!

It was very sunny, but windy, and the wind was cold!!!  Here I am checking Ben's spelling.  lol.

The scavenger hunt took us to the museum. They had a nice local collection of Dutch artificats including a World's fair clock!  Upstairs they had lovely fine art pieces and collectables.

I took a picture of a butter churn, because we've been reading about them in a few subjects, and I thought the kids would like to see.

But this one was particularly cool, because someone engineered a treadmill attachment that a sheep or dog could operate to help with the butter chores!

Founder of Holland.

True to it's name, there were tulips everywhere!!!

More scavenger hunt art.

The musicians were Billy's favorite.

At the bookstore we bought one of the titles for school next year, and at the candy store we bought some mini stoopwaffles.

We attempted to go to HopCat a 3rd time, since the one in East Lansing and Ann Arbor had both been a slight disappointment (when we were expecting a stellar time) with no expectations.  Somehow, HopCat managed to disappoint a third time, by not even being open! It was something to do with covid, but it was still unbelievable to try to go with no expectations and still be disappointed.

More scavenger hunt art in a park.

We eventually settled in for an early dinner at an Irish pub.  The food was good, the service was super impressive for such a busy weekend, and the environment was top notch.  

We hung out there for about 3 hours and then tried to go to New Holland brewery.  Sadly, they were full, and so we were unable to go, but made a reservation for the next morning.  We popped down the street, and went to a different local brewery.  We ended up outside, which was not too awful in the sun, but got chillier as the sun set.

On the way back to the hotel, we found one last piece of art to play with.  Billy is blowing the statue.  These are seriously my favorite from our trips.

We had cancelled our New Holland Brewery reservation, thinking that a breakfast place would be better, which turned out to be a mistake. The next morning, the town was flooded with people.  We finally found a restaurant with immediate seating a ways out of the way, after 2 failed attempts.  Once we had full bellies and caffeine in our systems, we worked on our scavenger hunt and then made our way to the windmill.  

Sadly, the windmill had a two hour wait just to get in, and we didn't have that kind of time. So, we snapped a picture and walked back into town to finish the hunt.

Somehow, more and more and more people were coming in!

Our final item was the Wizard of Oz exhibit at the library.  Billy is pretending to be one of the midgets. = )

We made our way back to the car to leave.  I took one more shot of a hunt item, since I'd marked it off and forgotten to snap a picture.

The tulips were beautiful and they were everywhere!!  (I took pictures all weekend, but thought I'd group them all together here.)

The blushing ladies were my favorite.

Black tulips (and a white party crasher!)

What a fully open tulip looks like!  I had no idea.

Once we finally made it back to the car, it was time to get out of town!  Sadly, it took us 1 hour to go three blocks.  Traffic was not moving.  I was able to hop out of the car, walk all the way to the next street and back, and Billy had only moved 4 car lengths.  

I finally messaged my mom at 3, to let her know we would be late for 5, since we could not leave Holland!  On the map it was red all through downtown.  Finally, they brought in some traffic controllers, and we started to move.  

We were still late for our grocery pick up and 5 o'clock return, but at least we weren't in Holland any longer.

I know for sure I would not bring the kids to opening weekend, but we might go back during the week sometime this month to see all of the beautiful flowers!

later days