The Flower Parade: Before and After...

For the first time in several years, we missed the Flower Parade. Luckily that didn’t mean that I missed seeing this year’s floats. I was thrilled to again have the opportunity to go on a tour behind-the-scenes to see the floats being made. This year’s theme was Dutch Design. As you can see, building floats can be backbreaking work.

It’s incredible that the floats are decorated entirely by volunteers in just three days. Although we missed seeing the floats traveling down the road, we saw them parked in Haarlem the following day before we met up with hashers to go on a bike hash. So these photos truly do depict the before (completion of the floats) and after (the parade).

This float was for the Efteling Amusement Park.

Apparently this fellow’s head went up and down when the float was moving.

This was for the Dutch city of Hillegom...

...and here’s some birds found in the Netherlands.

This represents Escher’s Bird Fish from 1938.