Like I mentioned in the previous post – everything is blooming a lot earlier, even north of us. We’ve stopped in the city of Pella, Iowa many times before on our trip because there’s a nice coffee shop on the square with a good lunch menu, and the town square is a great place for the kids to run off some energy. Even though the town hosts a giant tulip festival later in the spring every year, we’ve never actually seen a tulip blooming in the town – we travel through at Easter, long before the tulips are usually up in this region.
But not this year. I feel sort of bad that by the time their tulip festival rolls around most of the tulips will be gone, but what a treat it was on Easter weekend. The town was packed with strolling people and tulips of every color. Lots of Dutch costumes and wooden shoes as well. They take this stuff seriously.
So no coffee shop / ice cream soda visit (it was Easter Sunday after all, and we were still brunch-stuffed) but we did enjoy the walking and exploring, and I’m quite sure that extra stretch helped the little one nap for good portion of the trip. And that’s the best kind of travel treat there is!
