Things to do at Schiphol Airport Amsterdam
Flying out of Schiphol? Read here all the steps to make your departure easy, and lots of ideas for things to do at Schiphol Airport while you wait for your flight.
The Netherlands
I live in the Netherlands, so I have lots of articles from around the country. In particular, if you’re planning travel to Amsterdam, you’ll find reviews of lots of Amsterdam museums and other sights. But there’s plenty more to see outside of the tourist crowds in Amsterdam, so check out my articles about other places too!
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Fraeylemaborg castle in Slochteren, The Netherlands
Fraeylemaborg, a charming historical estate house and garden in the northern Netherlands, is well worth the visit both for the period interior and the lush gardens.
Star-shaped Bourtange Fortress in the Netherlands
If you visit the east of the Netherlands, don’t miss Bourtange, a charming village inside a star-shaped fortress.
Mardi Gras around the world – and Mardi Gras food!
Mardi Gras around the world has morphed into a range of different pre-Lenten celebrations. Read here about how different countries celebrate!
Groningen walking tour
A Groningen walking tour to introduce you to this young, dynamic and hip city with a world-class university and plenty of history to discover.
Top 10 must-see places in the Netherlands
Top 10 must-see places in the Netherlands for you to take your travel to the next level: some very well-known sights, some less so!
Two Boat Bike Tours, compared
On Boat Bike Tours, the boat serves as a floating hotel while guests go cycling. Read this review of their Northern route trip and a comparison of their standard vs. premium ships, plus some tips!
The Liberation Route Europe: WWII battlefields and more
If World War II interests you, the Liberation Route Europe is something you could easily build a European vacation around. It traces how the Allies advanced through Europe to retake it from the Germans. Click on any of the 10 countries listed on the Liberation Route’s website and you’ll find dozens of sites marked. The…
Heeswijk Castle near Den Bosch
I’ve written about two contrasting castles in the Netherlands before: Muiderslot and Castle de Haar. Muiderslot is the archetypal medieval castle: square with towers in each corner and crenellated walls between them. Castle de Haar, on the other hand, is far more ornate. Meant to look medieval, only more so, it was actually built in…
Aviodrome Lelystad, an aviation museum
For a fearful flyer like me, airplanes hold a certain fascination. It can seem an absolute miracle that something so big and heavy can actually get off the ground. And then, of course, there are flying enthusiasts. Those fortunate people actually enjoy their time aloft, taking pictures out the window or just dropping off to…
What to do in Den Bosch, a.k.a. ’s-Hertogenbosch
Our first bit of travel, as the pandemic seemed to subside here in the Netherlands, was a simple weekend away in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, generally referred to as Den Bosch. It’s only a few hours from home, and I had to be near there for a couple of days to lead a workshop anyway. My husband and…
Kinderdijk or Zaanse Schans?
You’re visiting Holland, so of course, you want to see windmills. While windmills dot the countryside all over the Netherlands, Kinderdijk and Zaanse Schans are two popular places for viewing windmills and seeing inside them. I wrote about a visit to Zaanse Schans a couple of years ago. North of Amsterdam, Zaanse Schans has a…
29 things to do in Drenthe province
If you’re not from around here, you’ve probably never heard of Drenthe, a province in the east of the Netherlands. When I decided to make a list of things to do in Drenthe, I was surprised at how many there are. Some are a bit odd or obscure, but those are the places I like…
40 things to do in Groningen province
Tourists to the Netherlands visit, for the most part, Amsterdam. They might take a side trip to Keukenhof (tulips galore) or Zaanse Schans (windmills in picturesque quantity) or the Hague. I live on the other side of the country, in a province called Groningen, whose biggest city (about 200,000 people) is also called Groningen. That means…
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…
Amsterdam Cheese Museum review + all about Dutch cheese!
A review of the Amsterdam Cheese Museum, plus everything you ever wanted to know about Dutch cheese!
A complete SAIL Amsterdam 2025 guide
It’s unusual for me to write an article about something that hasn’t happened yet, but SAIL Amsterdam only happens once every five years: best to be prepared! And this time, it hasn’t happened in 10 years because the 2020 edition was cancelled. The 2025 edition of SAIL Amsterdam celebrates both the 750th anniversary of the…
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…
Castle De Haar: An extravagant vision of the medieval
Castle de Haar is one of the most fanciful castles I’ve ever seen, if you discount Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disneyland. It’s got a moat, a formal garden, towers and turrets galore. Stunningly ornate, especially inside, it’s a medieval princess’s dream. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one of them and…
Muiderslot Castle (a.k.a. Amsterdam Castle)
When you were little, did you ever draw a picture of a castle? If you were like me, the castle in your picture was square, with a tower in each corner, crenellations along the walls and a drawbridge to an arched gateway in front. I’ve been to a lot of castles in my travels, but…
Eating Europe’s Jordaan Food Tour: A review
Rows of pretty small houses and shopping streets lined with a mixture of hip and quirky stores, along with a smattering of “coffee shops” leaking the reek of marijuana out onto the sidewalk: this used to be my image of Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood. It never occurred to me until I took a Jordaan food tour…
Menkemaborg in Uithuizen: Dressed to impress
Groningen has three nearby manor houses or “stately homes” that are open to the public and furnished to allow visitors to learn about local history. I’ve written about one of them before: Fraeylemaborg, which I only half-mockingly referred to as the “ancestral home.” Another is Menkemaborg, a similarly impressive display of wealth and social position…
Boat Bike Tours: A review of “Hansa Highlights”
One of the first people I met on my recent week-long trip with Boat Bike Tours was a retired Canadian man named Peter, who told me right off the bat that this was his third tour with the company. I took that as a good sign. Disclosure: This is a sponsored post in that I…
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…
Below the Surface in Amsterdam
When I went to see Below the Surface in Amsterdam, to be honest, I hadn’t done my research. Just a quick internet search, and I added it to my list of what I might see that day in Amsterdam. I expected a museum, a small one, in or near Rokin metro station, since that was…
An outstanding art museum in the Hague: Mauritshuis
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:…
A self-guided Rotterdam walking tour: Architecture and art
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…
De Rotterdam Architecture Tour
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…
Is the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam erotic? A review
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…
Micropia museum of invisible life
Getting off the tram with my son and daughter, my first indication that we were nearing our destination, Micropia Museum, was an arrow on a building with the text “only 80,000,000 micrometers to Micropia.” Micropia, a new exhibit at the ARTIS zoo in Amsterdam, bills itself as “the world’s first museum of microbes.” Disclosure: This…
Moco Museum: Contemporary art in Amsterdam
Banksy and Dalí on show in one museum? When I heard that, I was definitely up for a day trip to Amsterdam to visit the new Moco Museum. Moco Museum Moco stands for Modern Contemporary Museum and, like the much better-known Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh museum, it is located on the Museumplein in Amsterdam. The…
Yotel Hotel at Schiphol: A Review
You’ve probably heard of capsule hotels. First developed in Japan, capsule hotels keep costs down for guests by using the available space efficiently. Often stacked one above the other, the capsules are each the size of a single bed. You can’t even stand up in them, making them, as the comedian Jeanne Robertson (video below)…