This category includes all my articles about my Europe travel. Because I live in the Netherlands, I can travel in Europe quite easily, and as you see here, I’ve seen a lot of it. Generally I don’t write “ultimate list” or “everything you need to know” posts. Instead, I tend to focus on just one or a few sights or experiences from my specific point of view. Enjoy!
A so-called “tower house”, Crathes Castle in Scotland has been added to and changed over the centuries. First built in the mid-16th century, it was the home of the Burnett family of Leys, who lived there for over 300 years. It’s one of the 14 castles in Aberdeenshire worth visiting. Crathes Castle still has its…
My initial interest in visiting Mauritshuis, an art museum in the Hague (Den Haag), had to do with one single painting: Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, painted in about 1665. But this outstanding little Den Haag museum has many more gems of Golden Age painting. A disclosure: This is a sponsored post:…
Berlin is a wonderfully diverse and dynamic city, and especially intriguing to visit as a tourist with an interest in history. In particular, Berlin is the place to go if you like learning about 20th century history, and, more specifically, World War II and the Cold War. I’ve written about a number of Berlin’s WWII…
As I wrote in my overview of Aberdeenshire castles, my expectation was that the Dunnottar Castle ruins would be worth about a half-hour’s visit. I’d seen photos, and its setting – on a cliff-edged finger of land extending out into the North Sea – made for some very dramatic photography. In those photos, however, it…
If you’ve ever seen a film involving Queen Victoria, you’ve heard of Balmoral Castle. This is the place the queen used as her escape: her place in the country. She loved Scotland, and this location in Aberdeenshire is stunning, with its rolling hills and deep forests. Note added September 9, 2022: Queen Elizabeth died today….
I’ve visited Amsterdam – about two and a half hours from home – more times than I can count. Hamburg is only slightly further away – three hours by car – and I’d never been there. It was time. My husband, Albert, and I decided to spend a weekend in Hamburg and I was fortunate…
The following is a guest post by Georgie Mack of Journey with Georgie. I ended up in Cornwall largely by mistake. To cut a long story short, a misleadingly titled university (Who would have thought “the University of Exeter” was, in reality, not even in the same county as Exeter?) and a poor understanding of…
There’s something about the fact that Craigievar Castle in Aberdeenshire is pink that makes it conjure fairy-tale visions. Or maybe it’s that it’s taller than it is wide: think “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” Either way, it’s an enchanting sight when you first spot it from a distance and do a double-take at its…
If you happen to be a regular reader of Rachel’s Ruminations, you’ll know I love castles. Scotland has plenty of them, and, conveniently, my son is currently studying in Aberdeen. That gives me a great excuse to visit, both to see him and to visit castles. This article covers all 14 Aberdeenshire castles worth visiting….
The leaflet advertising the Wick Heritage Museum compares the museum to the TARDIS. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ll know exactly what that means: Doctor Who’s form of transportation, a blue police box (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), is bigger on the inside than the outside. Outside, the museum is small and unimpressive:…
In my last post – about the Scottish Highland heritage tour that I took with my friend, Kate – I mentioned Dunrobin Castle as one of our stops. In reality, we stopped there twice: once on the way north and again on the way south. The first time we tried to see Dunrobin, the electricity…
When I told my friend Kate that I was planning to visit my son in Aberdeen and spend a week exploring Scotland, she immediately wanted to come along. Kate has Scottish heritage and was curious to see some of the history of her family and why they left Scotland. Our trip turned into a wonderful…
Most people who visit Czechia focus on Prague. Prague is such a beautiful city that it makes a great city trip for a weekend or a week, and no wonder: the old city of Prague is the most important of the UNESCO sites in the Czech Republic. Prague’s Jewish Quarter is a part of the…
Kutna Hora, a small city east of Prague, contains an entire historical quarter that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, more correctly called “Kutná Hora: Historical Town Centre with the Church of St Barbara and the Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec.” The old town maintains its original medieval layout, established at a time when…
The small town of Trebic is about two hours southeast of Prague in the Czech Republic, and the thing to see in Trebic is its UNESCO site. When I say “UNESCO site” though, I’m really referring to three sites that UNESCO has combined into one: the old Jewish Quarter, the old Jewish cemetery, and a…
The Holy Trinity Column, a masterpiece of the Moravian Baroque style, is a UNESCO site in Olomouc, a small town in the eastern end of the Czech Republic. Standing alone at one end of Olomouc’s Upper Square, this memorial column stands 32 meters tall. Covered in impressive artwork, it dates to the 18th century. (Disclosure:…
If you’ve followed Rachel’s Ruminations for any length of time, you’ll know that I struggle with my fear of flying. So, naturally, when bloggers attending the TBEX conference in Ostrava, Czech Republic, last month were invited to a Prague Airport tour, I jumped at the chance. “Face your fear” and all that. (Disclosure: I took…
Rotterdam is famous for its post-war architecture, mostly because a World War II bombing in 1940 destroyed much of the city. Yet it didn’t just rebuild and settle in; it is still constantly changing, expanding and reinventing whole neighborhoods. On a recent visit, I took a tour of a few new buildings, but I also…
Very little of Rotterdam survived World War II. While this means it is not the place to see the Netherlands you expect – charming streets along canals, 16th century merchants’ homes, or picturesque windmills – it is the place to see post-war architecture. This is why I signed up for a tour with De Rotterdam…
Krakow’s Old Town is centered around a lovely main square called Rynek Główny, which means main market. It dates to 1257, when it was rebuilt after the Mongol-Tatar invasions. Krakow Main Square Krakow Main Market Square forms the focal point of Krakow Old Town, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the center of the…
You wouldn’t think that touring a salt mine would be particularly interesting. I pictured tunnels carved into solid salt, and that was about it. It turns out that the Wieliczka salt mine outside Krakow, Poland, is much more than tunnels carved into salt. It has a history all its own, and, surprisingly, it has artworks…
Polish food doesn’t have the excellent reputation of, say, French cuisine or Thai cooking. Frankly, it’s not something I ever really thought about. So when I traveled to Krakow for an influencer conference and was offered a place on an Urban Adventures Krakow food tour, I figured, “Why not?” I had minimal expectations of the…
Crazy Guides’ communism tour advertises a visit to Nowa Huta, a “model communist city.” Built starting in the 1950s, this experiment in communist community-building is considered a landmark of Soviet-era socialist architecture and urban planning. I signed up for the tour with low expectations. I thought that the phrase our tour guide kept using, “worker’s paradise,”…
You’d think that after visiting the UNESCO-listed fortified churches of Transylvania and the painted churches of Moldavia, also UNESCO listed, we’d have gotten tired of visiting historic churches. Romania has yet another collection of UNESCO-listed churches, though. (Maybe Romania’s motto should be “Land of Churches”!) Right up near the border with the Ukraine, the wooden…
The Elie Wiesel Memorial in Sighet, Romania, where Wiesel lived, is a small museum with a big, important message.
Last week I posted about the fortified churches in Transylvania, eight of which make up a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Another collection of churches in Romania, this time in the northeastern part of the country, Moldavia, are also UNESCO sites, just listed as “Churches of Moldavia.” The Painted Churches of Moldavia What makes these churches…
As the crowds shuffled through the castle, some tourists tried to stake out spots where they could take pictures of each room without people in the photo. Others posed for selfies, their backs to the beautifully restored spaces. One man, reaching high in an attempt to snap a picture above our heads, leaned casually on…
A Communist Consumers Museum? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? I mean, in the Cold War, we in the West were the consumer society. We still are. They were, well, communist. So what could a Communist Consumers Museum even show? When we passed through Timişoara, Romania, this summer, we didn’t really have any plans. Picking…
Majestic buildings boast imposing, ornate facades, even on the side streets. Edged with statues, often figurative, each row of windows differs from those above and below, yet they all display detailed workmanship. Grand doorways framed with artwork, topped with glass, span several centuries of architectural styles. But the paint is flaking away. Underneath, exposed to…
I love castles, especially the medieval kind. As a result, I visit castles pretty much whenever I can. So this summer, as we were on our way to a vacation in Romania, we decided to make a stop at Burghausen Castle. I’d never heard of the place, but it was marked as a castle on…
We weren’t even planning to go to Deva Castle. My husband and I were just driving along, minding our own business, on a road trip in the western Carpathian mountains of Romania. The GPS was guiding us from Timişoara (beautiful buildings, much in need of renovation) to Alba Iulia (18th century fortress with seven bastions),…
The short answer to the question in the title is “No, the Erotic Museum Amsterdam is not erotic.” What is it? Thought provoking and sometimes disturbing. Why I didn’t go to the Erotic Museum Amsterdam before You may remember that I reviewed the Sex Museum some time ago, calling it “the cure for insomnia.” I…