Amsterdam flowers

On our last day in Amsterdam, we went out of the city again to visit some of my mom's friends from a long time ago when she used to live in the Netherlands. On the way there, we visited the Alsmeer flower market, where they sell millions of flowers every day by auction.

This is a huge building where they auction around 20 million flowers each day!

All the buyers sit in a room (there are several different rooms), and bid on the flowers for their suppliers.

The Dutch way of auctioning is to start the price high and go down from there. The buyers push a button at their table to buy the flowers, and the one who bids first at the highest price gets first pick.

The flowers are then lined up by buyer, and shipped off the same day in order to stay fresh.