TULIP TIME 2014

one of each, please. (bismarcks are my favorite).

every time i take a detour down this walkway i fall in love with pella all over again.

waiting for the parade. paraiting.

the first weekend in may brought in pella's annual tulip time festival {the website has a countdown - only 359 more days until next year's fest! mark your calendars!}. even though my hometown is only an hour and fifteen minutes from pella, my family and i had never been to tulip time before i started attending college here. i partook in the festivities my freshman year, but alas, my family still hadn't made it down, so they took a family "vacation" {my sisters' teachers were amused by this} and came down spend the day with me and experience tulip time together. 

the imperfect weather - cold, cloudy, windy, with unpredictable on-and-off spitty precipitation - made for the perfect day tourist-wise. there weren't many other crazies out braving the icky weather which meant NO CLAUSTROPHOBIA NOR LINES AT THE FOOD STANDS. we went full-blown tourist on this little dutch town we thought we were already too familiar with by walking through the streets to tour every shop and museum, admiring the freshly bloomed tulips, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the dutch dancers in their traditional dress, cheering and waving at the floats during the parade, and eating our way around the park. 

eating. oof. like any good festival, tulip time's main attraction {in my humble opinion} is most definitely the food. the amount of {gross, greasy, heavy, stinky} food i consumed over the entire first 72 hours of the month of may was shameful. i live with regret! and while i'm still paying for it a week later guilt- and bloat-wise, it was totally worth it. we couldn't pass up the once-a-year opportunity to consume sweet little dutch pastries and the always-available-yet-impossible-to-neglect-when-within-a-20-foot-radius smokey row {twice} and disgustingly midwestern corn dog/walking taco lunch combo {not pictured because: regret, see above}. and as much as i hated myself for it, you can bet your bottom dollar my friends and i spent the next 5 meals throughout the remainder of the weekend uptown. heaven forbid the phrase "campus cafeteria" even crosses your mind during tulip time. 

stroopwafel | poffertjes

my family and i have this way of making an adventure out of the silliest, most simple of things. it's one of my favorite things about them and us as a general bunch of humans. tulip time is such a unique affair. while it's in no way simple, it does have a quaint, charm-y feel to it. it's neat to see the entire town come together to proudly celebrate their heritage. it sure was a pleasure to get to experience it all with my crew.

dutch is a good look for me, i think.