The village of Giethoorn – Strange and Amazing
This post is for Jonathan- he sent a request in for us to travel up to the Village of Giethoorn: The Venice of the North. While I wouldn’t exactly agree with the moniker, I did think it was an interesting trip.
Getting to Giethoorn
In case you’d like to see the area on a map click HERE. We rented a car for the day, I looked into the train or bus options and they both took over 2 1/2 hours each way. We left Amsterdam and took the train to Schiphol airport where we picked up our car. All went smoothly.
We drove through some beautiful scenic farm country and found ourselves in Giethoorn. It was an overcast day with spotty rain when we arrived. Being that the town is strung along the canals it was quite windy and cold at times, we even had the excitement of a full on hail storm.
We arrived and found parking right away near the center of town, and started off on foot. The original plan was to rent a boat, there are no cars in the town itself, but with the wind and rain, that idea quickly hit the chopping block. We walked up and down the canals admiring the adorable cottages.
It was really beautiful, each home perfectly manicured. There was no shortage of restaurants, shops, ice cream vendors and bars along the canal. We stopped into one to get some shelter from the rain, and a hot Chocomel.
Disclaimer: Magical but touristy
The village is adorable no doubt but it is also pretty overrun with tourists. We got a heads up about this from a great server we had at the amazing Mojo Bar in East Amsterdam the night before our trip. She explained how the town came to the conclusion that it should be a destination and started advertising to tour companies to bring visitors in- by the busload.
Well, it worked. I think that since it was a cold and rainy day we got lucky and the town wasn’t completely packed, though there were plenty of tourists milling about admiring the hobbit village. All in all a fun little journey- take a look at the photos and see for yourself.
Visit their tourism site there if you want to plan a visit HERE
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