Western Europe

Amsterdam Tulip Museum review

Amsterdam Tulip Museum review

Did you know that Rembrandt sold his painting, The Night Watch, in 1642 for 1,600 guilders? Just five years earlier, a single tulip bulb had sold for 5,200 guilders. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. That means I’ll receive a small commission on anything you buy through clicking the links. This will not affect your…

The Willet-Holthuysen Museum: An elegant Golden Age house in Amsterdam

The Willet-Holthuysen Museum: An elegant Golden Age house in Amsterdam

Many tourists visiting Amsterdam come to see the beautiful buildings in the old center. The UNESCO site – officially called “the Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Amsterdam inside the Singelgracht” – is lined with elegant “Golden Age” houses. It’s very picturesque and very Instagrammable. You can see a few of them on the inside: one…

Amsterdam Historical Museum

Amsterdam Historical Museum

I visited the Amsterdam Historical Museum (more properly just called the Amsterdam Museum) as an afterthought. It was on my list: one of the many small museums and other sights to see in Amsterdam that I like to visit and write about. That day, though, I wanted to see Below the Surface, an archeological exhibit…

Lovely Burghausen Castle

Lovely Burghausen Castle

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…

Electric Ladyland: hippie heaven

Electric Ladyland: hippie heaven

Electric Ladyland in Amsterdam is definitely one of the weirdest museums I’ve visited yet. (Okay, the Toilet Museum in Suwon, South Korea, was pretty weird too, but this isn’t a contest. At least not yet … ) The museum claims to be the “first museum of fluorescent art.” It certainly includes a lot of fluorescent paint. Whether…

The Houseboat Museum, Amsterdam

The Houseboat Museum, Amsterdam

If you’ve ever wandered the UNESCO World Heritage-listed canal rings of Amsterdam, you’ve noticed the many houseboats moored along the canals. Have you ever wondered what they’re like on the inside? What’s it like to live in a houseboat? The Houseboat Museum Amsterdam gives a glimpse of that life: a very quick glimpse, given how…

The Jewish Museum in Berlin

The Jewish Museum in Berlin

After my experience at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, I was apprehensive about visiting the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This, I thought, is something they will have to get right. After all, Berlin was Hitler’s capital city, the place where leaders managed the bureaucratic tasks necessary to carry out the genocide he planned. You…