Just over one year ago, I visited the Netherlands with my sister. My sister and I are part Dutch, and as such we wanted to visit the place my Oma grew up. In exporing the Netherlands, we got an experience based not only on the common tourist attractions that the Netherlands offers, but also exclusive, insider experiences suggested by my Oma.
We started off our journey in Amsterdam where we visited the Van Gogh Museum, and experienced his art first hand. We even had the opportunity to view a close up of Fishing Boats at Sea, a painting that Van Gogh had painted on the beach with sand mixed in with the paint. From there we took a free walking tour around Amsterdam where we saw parts of the Red Light District, the Oude Kerk (Amsterdam’s oldest church) , and the Anne Frank House.
We were lucky enough to be in Amsterdam for King’s Day, one of the Netherland’s largest national holidays. Despite the fact that we are not very fond of crowds, we enjoyed the majority of the day in the Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam’s botanical gardens. There we saw not only an exquisite botanical garden, but also greenhouses filled to the brim with rare plants from all over the world.
After Amsterdam we visited Hoge Veluwe, one of the Netherland’s national parks. Despite the fact that it was raining, biking along its paths was the best part of our trip. I felt so at peace in the park and since it was raining there were fewer people around to distract from its beauty, and so many different ecosystems to experience.
Next we visited Keukenhof, one of the world’s largest flower gardens. Since we went in May, we were just in time to see the display of bulbs that the garden had to offer us. The variety of blooms that the garden had was breathtaking, and if you ever decide to visit the Netherlands, especially during May, this is something you don’t want to miss. While there, we decided to have poffertjes. Similar to mini pancakes, poffertjes are roughly the size of a toonie and served with icing sugar and butter.
We didn’t spend all of our time in the Netherlands. We also spent one day in Franeker in Friesland. Franeker used to be the home of the second oldest university in the Netherlands and dates back to the 1500s. The town is also home to the oldest working planetarium in the world, which is over 235 years old. We got to see all the inner workings of the planetarium, including the gears that continue to run it. The construction was exquisite and took up almost half the house.
During the last couple of days on our trip, we visited Kinderdijk, a village that showcases the Netherland’s iconic windmills. There we had some more poffertjes, which I had become very fond of, during our week and a half at the Netherlands, and I got to experience what it might have been like to live in a windmill. What was most surprising to us was that many of the windmills there are still lived in.
Overall, we had an incredible trip and got to feel closer to our Oma, and my families culture and history. We also got to meet many family members who made the trip truly amazing and gave us the opportunity to see parts of the Netherlands we would never have thought to see, or have ever gotten to see, otherwise.