2016 was, among other things, a year of castles for us. Turns out we got to see a total of 28 castles in 8 different countries, which so far is a record for us. Some castles were ruins with almost nothing left and others were very well-preserved, and some of […]
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The Elfstedentocht. Ever heard of it? No, neither had we until we were planning a trip to the Netherlands. The Elfstedentocht, or Eleven Cities Tour, is an ice-skating race around – you guessed it – eleven cities. It takes place in the Friesland province of the Netherlands whenever it’s cold […]
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Gouda, Netherlands If you are a cheese lover, you absolutely must visit the city of Gouda in the Netherlands at least once in your life. If you haven’t already guessed, it’s the home of Gouda cheese. In Dutch, Gouda is pronounced something like “How-duh”, hence the exceedingly clever title of […]
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On the last full day of our four-night trip to Leiden in the Netherlands over the Memorial Day weekend, we actually explored the city of Leiden instead of doing a side trip as we had the previous two days. I’ll just go ahead and start this post off with a […]
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As I mentioned in the Alkmaar post , we spent 4 nights in Leiden over the Memorial Day weekend. Our second full day there was spent making another side trip, this time to three UNESCO World Heritage Site locations. Although there are 10 UNESCO sites listed for the Netherlands as […]
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The first German building placed on the UNESCO World Heritage site was the Aachen Cathedral in, of course, the city of Aachen. Aachen is about a 2.5 hour drive from us, so rather than get up at the crack of dawn for a day trip that would involve a 5-hour […]
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Have I mentioned that the Netherlands is one of my favorite countries in Europe? I like it more and more every time we go there. After visiting 36 European countries, I think I’d still choose the Netherlands as the country I’d live in if I was going to live in […]
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