One over-the-top trip!

• Bazillions of bicycles with babies propped on handlebar seats, in enormous front-end bins or simply strapped on behind.  All as individual, crazy, old or rusty as their owners.  
• Charming old houses, some just a window wide, supported sideways by each other and vertically by wooden posts.  
• Many beautiful neighborhoods and photo opportunities.  Shoes, a carved wooden handbag and coat among them.
• The MOST AMAZING food.  Beautifully prepared and presented.  Diet before traveling here.
• A floating flower market where houseboat stalls are filled with every imaginable flower, plant and bulb. Still, it's tough to top the SF flower market.
• A city that becomes even more magical when cruising the canals at night.
• Yes, the red light district still exists.  And "coffee" houses stock breads quite unlike Starbucks back home.
• Massive fields filled with magnificent colors, grown primarily for the bulbs not the cut flowers. 

A passion for petals?  You've picked the right place.  It's Amsterdam and the surrounding countryside during the spring. 

Here are the first pictures from our two-week trip beginning and ending in Holland.  With a sensational stop in the middle.

More photos to follow as I sift through thousands of images.