Wes & I went to Holland, Michigan for its 95th annual Tulip Time Festival in May.🌷 I already wrote entirely too much about the rest of our journey here (https://ragsreborn.blogspot.com/2024/05/wes-ericas-vacation-photo-album-grand.html) so we'll jump straight into our day at the festival. We had breakfast at Wolfgang's Restaurant. The place was decorated with famous photographs, movie posters, and artwork but with the main character changed to Matt Wolfgang's face and the other objects changed to breakfast items. It was pretty funny! Wes enjoyed his thick cut bacon and hazelnut coffee. I liked my Benedict okay but thought it was a little bland. The meal was sooooo filling!! 🍳 We walked around town all day and still weren't hungry for lunch (a shame because I had a Dutch restaurant picked out for us to try- deBoer's).
We went to the tulip festival at the Myriad Gardens here in OKC a few years ago and I complained that there weren't enough tulips. What we need is a legit citywide festival 100% dedicated to the flower! Which is how we ended up in Michigan, but sadly their tulips were having issues, too. 😔 The weather has been off this year so the mayor put out a notice stating that the tulips aren't doing as well as the town would have hoped. Most of them had wilted by the time we got there but a bunch of other plants were in bloom, so the parks were still very pretty.🌻🍀🌼 Holland is relatively small so we parked in a city lot and ended up walking the rest of the day. We saw almost everything on the festival map & itinerary.
The bottom two pictures are the interactive musical sculpture.
We started in Centennial Park- the main park with the most tulips. 🌷🌹 The city held a sculpture contest for local artists to build artwork from recycled bicycle parts. Wes liked the one of the flower delivery driver and I liked the interactive one (it was made from recycled soda bottles as well as bike parts). It was made to be a musical instrument by banging on all the pieces. The festival's website posted all of the winners, but I can't remember which ones won. I don't think any of the pieces I voted for made the cut.
It seemed like everything we saw was part of some citywide contest. There was an art gallery with tulip themed paintings and signs encouraging us to text in to vote for our favorite one. I chose the tulip ice cream cones. 🍦There was a Dutch costume exhibit in the same building as the art gallery. The traditional outfits were nice but they weren't very exciting. One of the plaques explained that the costumes for the town's dancers were tailor made by local volunteers. There was also a small exhibit about how the breastplates were stippled using nail heads and paint.
We walked to Kollen Park to see the Friends Goodwill Ship, but they were very strategic on its placement so we couldn't see it after all. There was a tour of the tall ship, but tickets were $8 and there was a line; we didn't think it was worth it. We thought we could just walk around the dock and look at it from afar. They placed it to where there's no way you could walk close enough to see it and there was a giant restaurant and boat shop blocking the view from the other side of the marina.😠 We were going to sit at the lake and rest a bit but it was littered with dead fish so we turned around and headed downtown.
I tried soooo hard to get a decent picture of the tall ship... no luck.
Downtown Holland is filled with cute shops & restaurants (it was too bad that we still weren't hungry; I saw an ice cream parlor that I really wanted to try but I knew my snack would melt long before I could finish it.) We went in a few of the shops for souvenirs and stopped in The 205 Coffee Bar for an afternoon drink. ☕ I got the lavender latte and Wes got a cold brew. The café had pastries from deBoer's for the morning... we got there around 1pm and they were sold out. 😒
We walked from the café to the building where the quilt show was. It was several blocks but I still hadn't finished my drink. Wes wasn't interested in the quilts, so he sat in the lobby and babysat my coffee while I went in. The quilt show was fantastic 😍, and of course we were encouraged to vote for our favorites. I voted for #60 (a paper pieced portrait of the Russian space dog, Laika🐶) and #31 (a red and white quilt with blocks depicting motifs of Dutch farm life). The red one might have placed but I don't think either of them won.
I voted for the red one in the bottom right corner. The paper pieced flowers in the top left were also stunning.
All of the quilts were amazing and I actually recognized (and have made) some of the blocks from the shop hop that I participated in over the past two years. It was a moment of, oh I can sew this!, but I know I will never have the time or resources to actually finish a quilt. I also recognized the Tula Pink and Ruby Star Society fabric in the quilts. I think I am officially a sewist now! 😎
Laika in the top left corner was my absolute favorite; the Girl with the Pearl Earring was also a top contender.
We had a couple of options for activities after the quilt show. I originally wanted to take the Dutch dance lesson but Wes wouldn't participate with me and it was starting to get hot outside, so I decided to skip. 🌞 I considered driving us to Windmill Island Gardens but that was more walking during the hottest part of the day, and it was closing soon so I decided against that as well. We ended up driving to the Deklomp Wooden Shoe Factory. It was more of a giftshop than a factory. There was one room that was set up to look like a workshop. It had some display equipment and a ton of sawdust, but it wasn't in use and we couldn't even go in there. Lame.
I wanted to buy a pair but I 1. have no use for a pair of clogs, and 2. have no space in my carry-on.
We had finished up all of the festival's activities and still had some spare time before the evening Dutch dance performance. We were going to go back to Centennial Park to rest (and maybe try an elephant ear pastry from the carnival) but the battery for the key fob to the rental car died. 😳 I've never driven a keyless car so I was freaking out. 😱 Luckily, the wooden shoe factory was directly across from a Blaine's Farm & Fleet. I called Enterprise while Wes went in to look for batteries. The employee at the Holland Enterprise was great and agreed to let me switch cars. 🚗 He put me on a brief hold to review my contract and then told me that unfortunately, they were out of cars. What?? Anyway, he was still as helpful as he could be, and transferred me to the Grand Rapids airport Enterprise since that's where the car originally came from. They didn't even pick up the call. It rang forever and then hung up on me. 😑 I called roadside assistance and the employee gave me three options: 1. drive the car at the risk of the key fob battery dying; she assured me that the car drives without a working fob (Wes did back her up on this claim, but I didn't want to risk it), 2. go to the Enterprise where I got the car from and get another one, or 3. buy a replacement battery and Enterprise will reimburse me when I return the car. She told me I had to make a decision while on the call so she could note it in my contract. I chose buy a replacement battery.
We made it to the park just in time for the children's dance performance. There was a group of small grade schoolers and a group of teenagers. The younger kids danced first and they were so enthusiastic!! The clomped so much louder than the teens. The next group was the "world famous" professional dancers. They did a couple of traditional dances; it was entertaining. 👏 It was my first time watching Dutch clomping so I would have judged anything as good.
Next was the highlight of my entire trip... I met one of my pen pals!! 🖃 📬 I started pen palling in 2020 as a way to make friends during lockdown. I've had a lot of awesome pen pals but have never met any of them (I got close to meeting one but it didn't work out.) I was so excited when Jodi agreed to come to the tulip festival! She and her husband live about 2 hours away and they had to work the day we were in town, but they still wanted to hang out at dinner. I made us reservations at New Holland Brewing for 8:30pm.
Our waitress took a ton of pictures at my behest. They all turned out good, so I had to use them all here... which is why there's like 4 of the same photos repeated.
Wes and I got to the restaurant early so we looked around their gift shop. They had all their house-brewed beers on display and I even picked out which one I was going to try, but when our waitress asked for our drink orders, I went with a cocktail. LOL 🍹 I should have gotten one of their beers but the Petal Pusher gin drink was amazingly delicious so I have no regrets! We got the pretzel with mustard and beer cheese. The beer cheese was really good (it had horseradish in it!) but the texture was weird... it was chunky. I ordered a pickle pizza, which was sooooo yummy. 😋 It had alfredo sauce, pickles, bacon and dill sprinkled on top. 🍕 Wes got the roast beef burger, which he said was too salty.
OMG that pickle pizza was to die for!!! 😋
My pen pal, Jodi, is so nice! 😀 She's super cool in her letters so I assumed she'd be rad in person but she was so much friendlier than I expected. Her husband, Ryan, is really neat, too. We all got along and chatted until the restaurant closed. 🍻 We talked like we had known each other for ages (which I guess I sort of do with our exchanging letters). Wes mentioned their midwestern accents when we were walking back to the car; I didn't notice but immediately wondered if they noticed a southern accent in us. Dinner was the highlight of an already excellent day! I am still amazed--over a month later-- that they took the time out of their evening to drive 2 HOURS to and from Holland on a worknight just to have a meal with us.
So that's it for Tulip Time. 🌷 The day started off kind of rough with the lack of tulips, but it ended up being a really nice & relaxing trip. I think we still saw plenty of tulips despite the weather. The festival had enough activities to fill a day trip (so it wasn't boring) without being too overwhelming with stuff to do & see. Great balance!! Wes said he was impressed by how big the festival was... the whole town got involved and there were so many different events.
No comments:
Post a Comment