Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

Bright Easter greetings from Schiphol Airport

Holidays, ,

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Stuck at an airport on Easter? If you’re lucky it will be at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where the flower experts from the famed Keukenhof gardens have arranged a display of long yellow tulips that stretches for almost 100 feet.

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These aren’t the only flowers blooming at Schiphol right now. Last week, Keukenhof unveiled a flower garden inside the airport complete with ten thousand purple and white tulips and lilacs in full bloom, a traditional flower stall, and old-fashioned picnic tables where travelers can stop and take in the fragrances and the colors.  Nice.

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Spring flowers at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

Environment, Recreation, ,

For the next two weeks it will definitely be spring at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport – thanks to an indoor flower garden filled with ten of thousands of lilacs and purple and white tulips in full bloom.

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The garden has a flower stall and picnic tables where travelers can sit and rest and take in the fragrances and the colors – and marvel at the fact that there’s a giant garden inside the airport.

All these flowers come from Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

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Kuekenhof, in the town of Lisse, welcomes more than 800,000 visitors every year. This is their first off-site display garden.  You’ll find it in Schiphol Plaza, the public area of the airport with shops and the entrance to the train station.

Photos courtesy Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

Stuck at Schiphol: Café Chocolat now open at Amsterdam Airport

Food, Restaurants

Here’s just one more reason why Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of my favorite places in the world: in addition to a great airport-wide art collection, a wedding service program, a casino, great kids’ play areas, and the on-site Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Schiphol (and museum shop), the airport now has the Netherlands’ first Café Chocolat, serving everything from chocolate fondue and chocolate mousse to something called a ‘Golddigger:” a glass of champagne with golden chocolate pearls.

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Photo courtesy Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Tulip field at Amsterdam Airport

Art, Environment, Recreation,

Heading to or through Amsterdam Schiphol Airport during the first two weeks of April?

You could happily spend your whole vacation at the airport, what with the massage spa, the snooze chairs, the casino, the kids play area, the museum, and all the great shops, restaurants and artwork.  They even have a YOTEL there, where you can book a room for a few hours for a nap and a shower.

For two weeks in April, the airport will also have a sea of flowers.

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The blooms are courtesy of Keukenhof,  the world’s largest flower garden, which is located near Lisse, Netherlands.

Each spring, close to a million people trek out to see the 70-acre showcase of more than 7 million flowers- which include more than 1,000 varieties of tulips.

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This is the first year the park is displaying some of those flower beyond Lisse.  So you can get a real taste of Holland without ever leaving the airport.

Look for the mini-Keukenhof at Holland Schiphol Plaza (before passport control).

Stuck at the airport? My tips in the Hartford Courant

Art, Cell Phones, , ,

Had a nice talk with Jesse Leavenworth, a reporter from the The Hartford Courant, a while back about my favorite topic – airports with great amenities – and see that his article has hit the paper.

I chatted with Leavenworth about some of my favorite airports to spend time in – including San Francisco International Airport – SFO (great art and food choices in the Int’l Terminal), Oregon’s Portland International Airport– PDX (great shops and no sales tax), and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (a casino, lots of art, on-site museum, and loads more).

Leavenworth was especially pleased to hear me praise Schiphol, because his paper’s hometown airport, Hartford’s Bradley International Airport (BDL) has a direct flight to Amsterdam. Oops.. not any more.. Northwest Airlines just announced that it is dropping that route as of October 2.

Bradley still has loads to offer, including a free parking coupon for folks who sign up for the airport’s frequent-parker program and free Wi-Fi for all.

Last time I went through BDL, they were still displaying something truly unusual: three patch-sized embroidered scenes created by Raymond Materson to honor the 1994 Special Olympics. Materson was in prison when he made the patches and unraveled his socks to get the colored thread to use in his artwork. Once out of prison, Materson kept sewing. His work is now highly prized and displayed in museums and in art galleries.

Materson is currently in his first major overseas exhibit at the Compton Verney Gallery in Warwkickshire, England. To celebrate, he made this portrait of Queen Victoria and was kind enough to let me share it with you.

Courtesy and copyright: Ray Materson

Airport weddings

Weddings

It wedding season and time for those news stories about people getting married on roller coasters, underwater and in other unusual places such as… airports?

Of course! For my next column on USATODAY.com, I’ve been gathering stories about couples that have tied the knot at airports.

The column should be posted soon, but in the meantime take a peek at the wedding packages offered by Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

It turns out that the airport that has a casino and its own branch of the Rijksmuseum also has a wedding planner on staff!

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