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Benelux (Plus) Vacation Recap
For anyone tuning in for the first time, this blog series catalogs a month-long trip, primarily through Belgium and the Netherlands, with a few days spent in Switzerland, Luxemburg, and a smidgen of Germany. Each entry offers photos, observations, and reflections from one traveler after a limited time in each location. Experiences and opinions may…
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Beyond Amsterdam: Muiden & Zaanse Schans
One advantage of staying in Amsterdam is convenient access to the rest of the province of North Holland. Travelers can choose to visit flower fields, windmills, a castle, or any number of settlements ranging from fishing villages to small, scenic cities. After weighing the options, two destinations made the cut: Muiderslot (AKA Muiden Castle), and…
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Amsterdam
It’s a strong, possibly self-contradictory opinion, but the capital city, Amsterdam, is not the Netherlands. It’s a beautiful thing in its own right, but it’s not Dutch. One of the country’s most admirable traits is openness, with their attitudes and policies embodying a mantra of “live and let live.” That has attracted droves of people…
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Kasteel de Haar / Utrecht
After a full day at de Efteling, a hotel in the nearby town of Kaatsheuvel offered a quiet, restful night before traveling onward. It was a half day filled with various transfers, starting with a bus that slowly made its way toward ‘s Hertogenbosch to catch a train to Utrecht. After dropping bags at the…
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De Efteling (theme park)
Before getting on to the dry part, de Efteling is just cool. It doesn’t need a more poetic description than that. As an outsider, it was a unique look into a Dutch family experience that, despite some signs in English, is very much for the locals. It started as a sports park in the 1930’s,…
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Returning to Ghent; Passing Through Breda
Visiting Ghent twice, twenty days apart, was anything but repetitive. A quick review of the first post about Ghent to avoid subjecting readers to too many duplicate photos didn’t even result in removing any images from this series. There’s obviously going to be some overlap when returning to the same place, but a bit of…
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Bruges, Belgium
This small, medieval town in the westernmost province of Flanders leaves an outsized impression. Just twenty thousand residents live in the city center, with another hundred thousand in the surrounding areas, yet 8.3 million tourists visited in 2019. Fortunately, whether due to visiting in the shoulder season or as some continuing effect of the pandemic,…
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Back to Brussels (via Frankfurt)
Readers of the first few entries that discussed Brussels (1, 2, 3) will have seen a plethora of negative commentary about the city with a few notable bright spots. Having learned from the prior visits, a third, brief trip through the city was a vastly-improved experience. Part of that was due to arriving late and…
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Bern, and Thoughts on Switzerland as a Whole
Bern, like the entire country, gets a mixed reaction. The city is small, clean, and almost charming. The contrast comes through seeing bridges over a tree-lined river, with streets full of drab, grey buildings extending outward, and the buildings themselves interrupted by vibrant flowers and painted fountains. It’s pleasing to see pristine streets and buildings…
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Zermatt, Switzerland
Another few hours and multiple trains lead to the town of Zermatt, less than ten miles from the Italian border and the Matterhorn that lies along it. The village seemingly wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the draw of the surrounding mountains. Everything is geared toward tourism, with clearly more hotel rooms than residences, and…