• Netherlands

    “Traces of war” hike and Castle Heeswijk

    Hike “Traces of war” In a part of the Loonse and Drunense dunes that we haven’t covered yet, stood a memorial monument. We hiked for two kilometers from our car to the memorial place. After a short while Tim discovered some QR-codes and began to scan them whit his phone. This area was one of the places the Germans held there ammunition. At the end of there war the German blew up there ammunition, because there were afraid it would fell into the wrong hands. Castle Heeswijk As you probably will know now, we love to snoop around in castles, gardens and history. The castle itself is an old building,…

  • Netherlands

    Heritage, prisons and craftmanship

    We’re enjoying Drenthe quite a bit! The time we took for sightseeing might be to short to see all that we want to see and it turns out there is so much fun stuff to see and do here. Our next best thing of “things to do” on our list was the prison museum in Veenhuizen. This small village was home to the most secure prison in the Netherlands up to 2007. They dedicated one of the buildings as a museum which focusses on the prison system in the Netherlands, starting in the middle ages up to the present day. We booked a guided tour through the part of the…

  • Netherlands

    Bai Zwolle, Hai Odoorn

    The weather here in the Netherlands has been quite crappy these past few days.. It did limit our motivation of going outside somewhat but we manage to hike through another national park called “Sallandse Heuvelrug”. The park consists mostly out of a large heather with some nice flowing hills. We enjoyed being here a lot, there were not many people around and the area was beautiful. This week we also have left our awesome BnB near Zwolle and moved up further north into the province of Drenthe. During our car journey, we stopped along the way for lunch at a cool looking restaurant near the edge of a forest area.…

  • Netherlands

    Giethoorn

    One of those huge tourist attractions we’ve heard lots about, but never went. Giethoorn. Since we are in the neighborhood we couldn’t resist investigating it. It was actually kind of nice. We were also very lucky with the amount of tourists, because we went on a Monday, the weather forecast was not great, and also there is still somewhat of a pandemic going on. That probably had something to do with it. We decided on renting a electric boat for the day and just cruise through the small canals and national parks nearby. It turned out to be a very nice day indeed. We did think about what it must…

  • Netherlands

    Waterloopbos and Naturalis

    Naturalis? You Dutch readers might think “That’s not near Zwolle at all!” And you are right, it is not. We had to be in Leiden for Tim’s by-annual blood tests which he needs to do because of his Hemophilia. Since we both had never been to the Naturalis and it’s in walking distance of the hospital, we decided to visit. Naturalis The Naturalis is a 200 years old natural historic museum based in an amazing looking building. They moved into this futuristic piece of architecture not too long ago. The museum has an impressive display of taxidermy, fossils and minerals. The crown jewels are a meteorite which was formed at…

  • Netherlands

    New stay and National Park Weerribben

    We left our lovely stay in Putten, said goodbye to our hostess and a few hours later we arrived at our next stay in Zwolle. New stay This stay is a farm that’s build on a mount. We get to stay in the front of the house and are allowed to use its massive garden. The owner and his wife are staying in the other side of the house and have their own private garden aswell. For the next ten days we will be staying here. Not too bad right?! National Park Weerribben This Park is actually called Weerribben – Wieden because it’s divided in two pieces. For every park…

  • Netherlands

    Elburg and Harderwijk

    For some of you these two places are pretty much in your backgarden. We’ve never been there before. Especially Elburg seemed very interesting and we decided to spend a day checking them out. We started in Elburg. This is a small city located within ancient fortified walls and next two large lakes, which used to be part of the Northsea. It was very nice to walk around and explore its narrow streets. We were also in luck as it was the first day of the church tower being open for the public. For a measly 1,50 euro you could climb the tower and have a great view across the city.…