Where : Haarlemmerme, Holland, between Hoofddorp and Haarlem.
When : from Saturday 6 April until Sunday 20 October - 9:30 am to 7 pm.
It's a great idea when you think of it: hold a huge, popular, flower exhibition every ten years in a different location, then afterwords transform the carefully preened and planted landscape into a public park.
Floriade, displaying an amazing volume of the world's flowers attractively presented, is a popular tourist desitination, made even more so by the fact that it's held only once every ten years.
The first Floriade was held in Rotterdam in 1960. The 2003 floriade will be held in Haarlemmermeer near Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.
What will you see? Acres of flowers in every conceivable environment, from floating on ponds to covering hillsides to sweating in hothouses. The scale of the exhibition is impressive, even to someone not all that thrilled with the idea of spending an entire day looking at blooming plants. After all, there are over one million bulbs planted here.
Check out the photos below for a view of the 1982 extravaganza.
Tickets
Tickets cost 17 Euros (about $15 at the time of writing) and are available by telephone:
- 0900-0555 (from the Netherlands)
- 0900-00444 (from Belgium)
- 0870 720 2002 (from the UK)
-
+31 172 428629 (from other countries)
Or you can buy Floriade tickets at the ticketservice desks of more than 500 Albert Heijn supermarkets in the Netherlands. An e-ticketing system is under construction. [More on the Euro]
How to get there
There is parking available for 7 € (Euros) a day, but you will probably want to consider take the 'Zuidtangent' connection: a bus that continually runs between Schiphol and Haarlem, stopping at the Vijfhuizen stop, which is a 5 minutes walk from the Floriade office.
