The Frans Hals Museum
There's a reason why the classic Dutch painters mastered the art of depicting flowers, and it wasn't just because they had florid imaginations. What the country's Golden Age artists were really painting was a national still life, the view just outside their windows. The best way to get in the mood for your blooming drive is to stop by the Frans Hals Museum (Groot Heiligland 62; www.franshalsmuseum.com), one of Holland's top small galleries. Check out Jan van Goyen's fine landscapes, which manage to pack in all the signature Dutch scenery you'll be passing: pearly rivers, sailing boats, and villages with church spires. Tellingly, van Goyen himself became notorious in the 17th century for swapping two of his ultimately timeless, priceless paintings for a handful of short-lived tulip bulbs.

Lisse
From Haarlem, head south on highway N208 to Lisse. This town makes a quaint pit stop in its own right, but its real claim to fame is the Bloemen Route's showstopper: the Keukenhof Garden (Stationsweg 166a, Lisse), which started as the small kitchen garden of a 15th-century countess and now bills itself as nothing less than the most beautiful spring garden in the world, designed to showcase the art of Dutch bulb growers. Spilling across 70 acres of wooded parkland and attracting more than 700,000 visitors annually, the garden has nine miles of walking paths that wind around ponds, a windmill, greenhouse pavilions holding indoor displays, and more than seven million bulbs planted three layers deep to ensure a blaze of color from the end of March to mid-May.

For a taste of Golden Age Dutch grandeur, stop by the tower-ringed Castle Keukenhof (www.kasteelkeukenhof.nl), which sits directly across from the entrance to the garden. Built by a former commander of the Dutch East India Company, which helped make 17th-century Holland very rich, the castle features the kitchen where aristocratic feasts of yore were prepared.