Save for a few past-their-prime tulips, festival was amazing

Another Iowa adventure completed last weekend, I visited the Tulip Festival in Pella with my mom as part of our bucket list of sorts. Quite a trip but worth it!A year ago I had heard how amazing this place was with tulips everywhere and amazing food. And the festival definitely didn’t disappoint. It was different than expected, however.The Dutch Market was packed with unusual and very reasonably priced items. While we didn’t spend too much time there we did each find a lawn ornament we couldn’t leave without! The festival has a little bit of everything for everyone.When walking up to the festival there was a tractor show of sorts with the vintage machines lining the street and there was a tractor rodeo that night, but we didn’t think we needed to stick around for that.The smells of food hit you from every street with tons of vendors set up in each corner.One of the first things we thought we needed to do was find a snack and what better than a Dutch letter? They are amazing also super flaky and we left about half of our treat on the floor that flaked off!While most of the museums and attractions all cost to go into we stuck to the street taking in the sights of the crowd and authentic windmills. The one additional thing we wish we would have done were the City Tours that took you around the town.Many of the tulips were in full bloom. There were beautiful small gardens all over the square that the visitors were taking the opportunity to get a picture. It was sad that some of the tulips were already past their prime with the wet, hard weather probably giving them a pretty hard beating.To be honest, we thought there would be more ...The parade was another must to see with the authentic outfits and tons of wooden clogs to be seen. The floats really took you back to when parades were huge and overdone and the detail on some were just incredible.The festival was amazing but I hope to go back to Pella some day when it is much calmer, smaller crowds and more time to browse shops and the city in general.