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!
Admit it: You like ABBA. Okay, maybe you don’t like ABBA, but you catch yourself singing along when you hear an ABBA song on the radio. Disclosure: I received free admission to the ABBA museum as part of a TBEX conference in Stockholm. All opinions, however, are my own. A second disclosure: This article contains…
Öster Malma Castle and Wildlife Park, which I visited as part of a familiarization tour organized by Visit Sörmland and Visit Sweden, includes a beautiful estate house and a large wildlife park. It is more modest (read: smaller) than the others we visited, like Gripsholm, Nynäs and Sparreholms, but was nevertheless interesting. Built in the 1600s,…
As you’ve probably guessed from my posts about Sweden, my trip was a great success. I took part in two familiarization tours: one before and one after the TBEX conference. The first was an introduction to the Stockholm archipelago and Swedish military history. In the second, I visited several manor houses and castles in the southern province of Sörmland….
The very impressive Nynäs manor house (pronounced new-nahs) is about a 30 minute drive from Nyköping. What makes this manor house special is that it was occupied continuously from when it was completed in the 1680s until 1984. In that year, the Gripenstedt family, who had owned it since the 1850s, sold it and all…
Budget airlines seek out secondary airports because the landing fees are lower. Skavsta airport, an hour outside of Stockholm, is one of these: both Ryanair and Wizz Air fly to Skavsta. Most visitors get on the express bus to Stockholm straight from their plane. That is a mistake. While I had booked a cheap Ryanair…
Back in the 1970s, the Swedish Parliament planned to build a garage underground next to the Parliament building in Stockholm. As often happens in European cities, the construction stopped when excavation uncovered the remains of what turned out to be the original medieval center of Stockholm. For two years, archeologists excavated and studied the city wall, built by…
Benidorm is one of those places everyone has an opinion about, and it usually isn’t good. When I asked my husband what he thought of the place, he described it as “an overgrown beach town with high buildings right up to the beach.” It was full, he said, with “loud Dutch and fat, pale, English…
Or: Both of these statements are true. The fact is that most of us only have limited time when we travel, and, if you’re like me, you want to see as much as possible in that limited time. Open-air museums help us cut corners by letting us see buildings from a wide area assembled in…
Exploring the Nordic Museum in Stockholm reminded me of some of the small-town museums I’ve visited before. Often a seemingly random collection of objects donated by residents or local companies, they offer insight into the area’s culture and history. I enjoy them because their “smallness” is often quite amusing. The Nordic Museum struck me as…
Gripsholm Castle and the towns of Mariefred and Strangnas are lovely places to visit: small-town charm deceptively close to Stockholm.
As part of a blogger familiarization tour in July, I visited a manor house called Sparreholms Slott, in the region called Sörmland, south of Stockholm, Sweden. Dating to the mid-1700s and renovated in the 1820s and again in the 1890s, it looks, inside as well as out, like a slice out of Downton Abbey’s world….
The old center of Stockholm, on the island of Gamla Stan, swarms with tourists—and probably a few locals too—in the months of July and August. Among the sights they visit is a medieval-era church called Storkyrkan. What few seem to know is that Storkyrkan also offers guided tours twice a day up its clock tower,…
In July, I was fortunate to participate in a short blogger trip on the theme of “Stockholm archipelago – close yet a world away.” We stayed on a relatively unknown island called Nässlingen, but also visited two fortresses to learn a bit about Swedish military history. Disclosure: I took part in this military history tour…
Ever notice how people love to hear about failed projects? I call it “epic fail tourism.” The most obvious example is the Titanic, about which there are numerous museums around the world (Belfast, Ireland, where the Titanic was built; Branson, Missouri; Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida; Southampton, England, where many victims were from; and many…
What if you could buy your own island? You’re probably picturing a palm-tree-lined beach on a tropical island, right? That’s not what Johan Pedersén wanted. Instead, he bought Nässlingen, one of the 30,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago in Sweden. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Nässlingen recently with a group of…
Things I like about Sweden, written on my first trip there, but they still apply!
I’ve never seen a hotel quite like Arolithos Traditional Cretan Village before. I only stayed there because I took the gamble that Hotwire offers, and I thought that I’d lost the gamble. I’m still not sure one way or the other. Disclosure: If you click and book a room using a link in this article,…
The town of Rethymnon on the north coast of Crete is a popular destination for visitors who want to venture away from their all-inclusive resorts for a bit of local color. The narrow streets of its old center wind between rows of narrow houses with balconies, often overflowing with flowers. Shops sell everything from made-in-China…
Just a week or so after visiting the Ter Apel cloister, a place of peace and contemplation, I arrived at The Holy Monastery of Arkadi in Crete, a similarly contemplative religious place. Arkadi is Eastern Orthodox, while Ter Apel was Catholic and then Protestant, yet it looked to me as if the monks in both places…
Knossos, the much-visited ruins of a Minoan palace on the Greek island of Crete, is not a UNESCO World Heritage site. However, it is on UNESCO’s tentative list, along with the four other Minoan palace ruins in Crete. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one of the links and make a…
The village of Ter Apel has been in the news a lot lately. A huge refugee center there is the first home for hundreds of Syrians, Eritreans, Afghans and others seeking safety and a new life in the Netherlands. Ter Apel’s claim to fame, though, if you can call it famous, is a medieval cloister…
Frequent travelers often express a certain disdain for places that are “touristy,” meaning crowded with tourists: San Marco’s square in Venice, for example, or the Tower of London, or the Forbidden City in Beijing. Many of us avoid such places, preferring the more off-the-beaten-track destinations. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on…
When you think of the Netherlands and gardens and flowers, what comes immediately to mind? I assume your answer is “tulips.” Tulips are cultivated here in huge quantity and they or the bulbs are exported all over the world. Keukenhof and Giethoorn One of the biggest attractions for tourists in the Netherlands is Keukenhof, a tulip…
If you find yourself with some time to kill at Amsterdam Central train station, there’s plenty to do right nearby. Here are some suggestions.
The Sex Museum Amsterdam is much more about pornography than sex, containing a mix of interesting objects and cheesy mannequins.
After booking your flight and picking the perfect London hotel, the next item on the list is figuring out where and what to eat in this British metropolis.
When I first arrived in the Netherlands back in 1997, one of the first bits of sightseeing I did, besides exploring my new hometown of Groningen itself, was to go on a driving tour of village churches in Groningen province. The idea came from my favorite guidebook: the Michelin green guide to the Netherlands. The…
A Grimm Fairy Tale Once upon a time, a rooster, a dog, a donkey and a cat, realizing they’d outlived their usefulness and under threat of being eaten or killed, set out toward Bremen. Their plan was to make a living as musicians: the Town Musicians of Bremen. On the way, they passed a cottage…
My husband and I recently spent a weekend in Bremen, which is about a two-hour trip from home. We didn’t choose Bremen because of anything in particular except that we wanted a weekend away, and we also felt we needed to be close enough to get home quickly if anything went wrong with the three…
If you visit the center of the German city of Bremen, you can’t possibly miss seeing St Petri Dom, the huge church whose massive, chunky twin spires dominate the central squares. St Petri Dom doesn’t have the beauty or grace of, for example, Notre Dame in Paris. As a matter of fact, my first comment…
A couple of times a week, I commute to my part-time job in Leeuwarden, in Friesland province. Sometimes I drive, but as much as possible, I like to take the train. I start by bicycling to the train station in the center of Groningen, parking the bike and boarding the train. The train trip takes about 35…
About a year ago I wrote a post about Groningen, the small city where I live. I mapped out a route that started at the train station and wound its way through the city, ending at the landmark Martinitoren. The Martinitoren Today, for the first time in several years, I climbed the Martinitoren, and it…
