Thousands of visitors at the opening of the National Tulip Day picking garden

Thousands of visitors came to the celebration of National Tulip Day in Amsterdam on Saturday. A picking garden with over 200,000 tulips was laid out on the Museumplein. Everyone was allowed to choose two bouquets for free.

This year marked the tenth year of the picking garden. Olympic skating champion and daughter of a tulip grower, Irene Schouten, opened the event at 1 p.m. In previous years, there was no picking garden because of the coronavirus measures. At that time, National Tulip Day was celebrated in a different way. Before the pandemic, about 17,000 visitors attended National Tulip Day in 2019.

A spokesperson for the organization estimated that there were about 18,000 visitors this year. "A lot of tourists." "Everyone is really taking selfies all the time", according to the spokesperson, who described the atmosphere as good. "The kids have their arms full of tulips."

Overall, National Tulip Day is an initiative of Dutch tulip growers and is held every third Saturday in January. This year the theme was 'Typical Dutch'.