Today, we had an early start to get to Royal FloraHolland’s facilities in Aalsmeer, near Schiphol airport. The warehouse was absolutely colossal–its floor area is larger than 243 soccer fields, something you can only really appreciate when you see it in person. Royal FloraHolland is a grower’s cooperative dedicated to floriculture, and it is the largest floriculture marketplace in the world. What this all means is that the facility we visited processes over 10 billion flowers each year from growers around the globe, auctions them, and then sends them to their purchasers, who distribute the flowers internationally. This is not an easy task, especially given the lifespan of fresh flowers. What stood out to me during the tour was just how optimized Royal FloraHolland has made the process.

First, they use a different method of auctioning where the price on a lot of flowers starts exceedingly high and quickly drops until someone chooses to buy it–this turns the bidding process into a game of chicken where buyers are looking to see who will jump first. This speeds up the bidding process and also encourages better prices for the farmers selling their product. Initially, these auctions were held in person within the facility, but are now held virtually. There is also an automated hanging rail system that transports flowers through an enclosed bridge over a highway to another warehouse where they are loaded onto trucks. This system uses photoelectric sensors and an extremely long barcode strip that runs along the rail to keep track of position and distance to avoid collisions and allow for rail switches. Then, there is the fleet of workers on small electric tractors moving trains of flowers on carts in every which direction at once. It was stressful just to watch. I’d imagine if you looked inside a beehive, it would be about as chaotic as the warehouse midauction.

All of this coordination and technology serves to streamline the logistics process as much as possible to minimize waste. Using their current system, flowers are delivered to the warehouse the night before the auction, auctioned off by 11:00 AM the next day, and are delivered to their purchasers’ trucks within 90 minutes of being auctioned off. Reducing the amount of flowers lost reduces the amount of land and resources needed to grow the flowers, as well as the carbon emissions from transportation. I very much enjoyed this experience.

After Royal FloraHolland, we visited Schoonschip–a small community in North Amsterdam comprised of ultra-sustainable houseboats. Our tour guide, Mike, was a resident of the community and was a wonderful guide. I loved that he told us about the issues the community faced due to experimental technologies like the unreliability of vacuum toilets used to collect feces for biogas production and the cracking of his sprayed liquid-cork facade due to heat. I also think it is wonderful that Schoonschip fostered such a close community of like-minded individuals who look after one another. In my opinion, I believe floating homes are a very niche solution to the housing crisis and are quite inaccessible to most people and impractical in most parts of the world. However, this project is perfect for Amsterdam and is an amazing lab to test out sustainable building practices, such as bamboo siding and triple-pane windows.

After lunch, I went to the Rijksmuseum. I simply cannot put into words how exquisite this museum is. I first toured the 1100s-1600s wing and saw many medieval Christian paintings, engravings, statues, and pottery. What I found amusing was how almost every piece had some sort of moral–from engravings depicting the prodigal son to paintings warning of earthly desire, the art was both decoration and lecture. The 1600s through 1700s floor was full of works from the Dutch Golden Age masters, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, de Heem, van Ruisdael, Steen, and many, many more. This was by far my favorite collection of work, and I could have spent all day here–the attention to detail in the selection of color palettes, framing of subjects, understanding of light, and expression of emotion was beyond compare. I loved Rembrandt’s The Standard Bearer and Vermeer’s The Milkmaid if I had to choose a couple of my favorites. Finally, I toured the 1800s floor, which featured a small number of Van Gogh works, including one of his self-portraits and his 1888 painting of a wheatfield in Arles. I cannot wait to see more Van Gogh on Thursday at the Van Gogh Museum. That’s all for today!

NOTE: I didn’t take any pictures of the paintings within the Rijksmuseum because there is absolutely no way to do them justice except to see them in person. Also, to truly appreciate everything within the Rijksmuseum, you should really dedicate a full day to seeing it. 2.5 hours really allowed me to explore just a fraction of the museum.