We woke up early at 5:45 am with the idea of arriving at the flower auction in Aalsmeer by 7 am. Somehow we took the wrong road and headed in the wrong direction before getting sorted out which added a few minutes to our arrival time and 20 km to the trip plan. We arrived shortly after 7 am and the lady at the ticket counter said that the auction is usually over by 8 am on Thursdays so we should see that first and then return to wander at our leisure afterwards. The other weekdays the auction continues until 9:30 or so which gives a bit bigger window for seeing it in action.

FloraHolland is supplied by over 10,000 growers from around the world. Aalsmeer is the world's largest auction centre and has five auction rooms with fourteen auction clocks. We walked along the elevated walkway which leads you along above the action below in the warehouse. We saw more flowers than we’ve ever seen in one place before! There were trolleys everywhere with usually three levels of flowers on each one. Some of the taller flowers only had two levels and others such as amaryllis were in boxes where you couldn’t see the flowers. We passed by a beautiful group of gerberas and stopped to take several pictures before moving on.

We arrived at the first auction room and got a front row view where we could watch the auction taking place. It wasn’t completely full with buyers but there were certainly lots of them concentrating on their screens and pressing buttons hidden on the side of the table. Buyers can also participate in the auction remotely, working from the comfort of their homes so it was hard to say how many people were actually competing for the flowers. At the front of the room were two auction clocks, each with their own auctioneer and each selling different items. The auction is a Dutch auction where the auctioneers set a price per stem and then the price just starts dropping from there (one cent at a time) until the first person decides to buy. There is no going once, going twice and buyers have to decide how much they are willing to pay before someone buys ahead of them. The red dot on the auction clock which shows where the price starts and then drops until someone bids moves so quickly that it is hard to keep track of. The buyers are purchasing hundreds of stems in only seconds. It was quite amazing to watch and we were glad that we had a translated sheet of what each field on the clock meant. Even then it was hard to keep all that info in your head and we had to keep referring back to it. It must be quite a job to go through training for! There were two tracks where trolleys of flowers were rotating through, but there was no way they had time to look at the flowers and then decide if they wanted them. They also don’t bring all the flowers through the auction room as that would take too long. After the flowers go through the auction room they are taken to the distribution area. From there, the workers on electric vehicles distribute the buckets or boxes of flowers to the trolleys of the clients. Once the client’s trolley is full, it is delivered to the wholesaler or exporter on the premises and a new trolley takes its place.

Once we had watched the auction for a while we decided to return to the start of the walkway to read the information panels and take in the action below. It was packed with distribution areas, flowers waiting to be auctioned, workers zipping around distributing and others inspecting or making sure things were running smoothly. The warehouse was enormous and you couldn’t see from one end to the other. There were even traffic lanes for all the small electric vehicles zipping around! We hit the warehouse at the right time since a bell rang indicating a break. This meant that the trolleys of flowers that had been brought to the distribution area, stayed there for twenty minutes rather than immediately being distributed. It was quite something to see so many flowers in one place and knowing that that was just a small portion of them. We saw lots of gerberas, hydrangeas, calla lilies, roses and chrysanthemums, as well as many other types, just too numerous to name.

We also passed by a suspended rail system which is used to transport trolleys to the south side of the road for distribution to clients based there. The rail system is almost 15 kilometres long and runs at around 11 km/h. The trolleys zoom overhead and over the road through a covered bridge and arrive at the south location in only 12 minutes. The shuttle can transport 2600 trolleys per hour which is the equivalent of 120 trucks!

We were amazed at all the activity going on and can only imagine all the systems in place to keep things running smoothly and distribute the flowers as quickly as possible. It was an amazing place to visit and we were so glad that part of the warehouse is open to the public.

We headed out around 9:30 and drove north towards Alkmaar. We popped off the autoroute about 20 km south of the town so that we could take a more scenic route. The map showed tulip fields around the road so we thought we would try our luck. The tulips are all extremely late this year because it has been such a cold winter. We were just keeping our fingers crossed that we would at least get to see some in bloom and not just the leaves. We passed many fields which were just leaves and some not even poking very far out of the soil. However as we drove on, I noticed one brightly coloured field off to the side of the road. I found a spot to turn around and drove back to find somewhere to park – luckily there was a parking lot with strange access driving between two fields on a very small road. We hopped out and were glad to see some beautiful red and yellow tulips in full bloom. There were also a few others that were just coming out and further on a field of white tulips that were in a huge area. There was a lovely daffodil field as well in full bloom and the patch of yellow was just amazing. We were particularly glad to see the tulips though and were happy that we had seen at least one field in bloom. Fingers crossed for a few more as we continue on our trip!

We then arrived in camp and had lunch since we were both hungry – breakfast seemed like ages ago. After lunch we had a cup of tea which we had skipped in the morning. We were both feeling rather sleepy so Anoop crawled upstairs and had a nap while I curled up for a doze in the back seat. Then we thought we’d better do some laundry since it was quite windy but sunny. Afterwards, we puttered away writing the blog and a few postcards enjoying the warmth in the van.