For more than 200 years Holland has been the centre of the global trade in cut flowers, through auction company Royal FloraHolland in Aalsmeer. Flowers from all around the world are flown into Amsterdam daily to be auctioned off at about 5am and then shipped around Europe in planes and trucks. It is a testament to the love of things beautiful and a “perfect market”, and a huge nod to Dutch efficiency.
If you walk above the huge flower halls you can smell when you are above the sweetpeas, the hyacinths or the red roses. It is a dream.
And, of course, Amsterdam is most famous for its tulips, as immortalised in the 1958 Max Bygraves song