A Day in Giethoorn

Otherwise referred to as The Venice of the North (along with at least 10 other northern European cities), this Dutch town is so quaint we felt like we were walking into a fairytale.

My mom and I went to Giethoorn as a day trip while she was in town visiting. So, once we parked at the edge of the town, we went looking for a boat rental place. Since it was late afternoon and would get dark in a couple hours, we stopped at the very first one out of sheer convenience, only to discover that if we continued to walk into town on foot, we would have stumbled upon other rental companies charging as little as 6euros! Oops.

Anyway, we begun our journey on our little motorized boat.

The only way to get to any of the houses, restaurants, or stores here is by boat or on foot. You could try to ride your bike but you would soon be forced to get off of it and make room for the groups of people meandering the narrow bridges.

I really enjoyed this town. It’s small and the lack of cars makes you feel like you walked back into time (if you exclude that every shop has a little wifi sign in the window). Although I really enjoyed walking through the town, I’m not sure if I would want to live there: there were huge groups of people constantly stopping to take photos of your house and peer into your windows, not to mention all the boat traffic! Perhaps doing off season (aka winter) it’s a much more peaceful village.