For those of you lucky people that get to spend a bit more time in the Netherlands and once you have done all the main sites, had a picture in clogs, eaten lots of cheese and smoked through the novelty of the coffee shops, then you are ready to explore some of the more hidden gems that the Netherlands has to offer.
The following are some of our personal favorites that are typically Dutch, spread out over the country (although it really isn’t a big country) and cover all seasons (but again you can easily get all seasons in one day here), so get out there and enjoy!
Cycling – what can be more Dutch than being on a bike to
get from A to B? Bikes (called Fiets here because -as Matt’s theory goes(!)- the first bikes of the early 19th century had no pedals but rather you propelled them with your feet…hence fiets pronounced ‘feets’) are king in the Netherlands and the primary means to get around, so not just for leisure, you get to and from work (sometimes with Lyssa on the back), you do the shopping, you visit friends, you can even get to your wedding by bike! For the visitors, the Netherlands has thousands of cycle routes that make a great day out and a great network of signs to make sure you are always on the right track. A local route we love to do is from the Hague, up to Scheveningen (the beach) and take a right towards Katwijk and Noordwijk along the coastal bike lane… you will find massive dunes and golden sand beaches (although
be sure you don’t accidentally wander onto a naturist beach!).
To the south east, near Tilburg you’ll find the Loonse and Drunense Duinen national park, rent a bike from the Rustende Jager and you’ll have a nice forest circuit for a couple of hours that will also get you sand dunes to go up and down, finishing back at the cafe for some coffee and Vlaai (local fruit pie tart that will help bring your sugar levels back up after the ride).
Further south, and Matt’s favourite is to Limburg where you can rent a mountain bike and follow the perfectly marked routes for kilometres and kilometres – some really good technical downhills, forest trails and generally some really beautiful countryside that will have you constantly stopping to take pictures and also plenty of bars en-route to enjoy the local beers (Hertog Jan, Gulpener, Brand and many more). We have to be honest and say that these days Matt always goes for the e-mountain bike, so that he can do double the distance and more importantly double the downhill fun without slogging up all those hills. Rent all types of bikes from the Cycle Center in Valkenburg,
even mopeds if you want a more sedate way to visit the area. For those of you couples where the other half is not so into mountain biking don’t worry, in the area is the shoppers heaven of the McArthur Glen Designer Outlet in Roermond, so typically our plan here is that Matt drops Lyssa off for a few hours of retail therapy whilst he hits the trails, win win for all. Whilst in the Valkenburg area, try and make a trip to the local caves, plus have a go at cave cycling, where you get to don a hard hat and follow a guide into the dark depths of the man-made tunnels that criss-cross the ground below – check out at ASP Adventure.
One last cycle place is a bit further afield in the East near Arnhem – the Hoge Veluwe – which makes a wonderful bike day out. This national park gives you a bike included for the day with bike parks across the area where you can just pick up a bike, cycle it around and leave when you want. The park itself has amazing terrain where you’ll encounter huge sand dunes – in the middle of the country – that will put you more in mind of the Middle East rather than the Netherlands. The Veluwe also has an incredible museum right at its heart – the Kroller-Muller Museum – filled with the best of 19th and 20th century impressionist paintings (van Gogh, Seurat, Monet to name a few), plus outdoor sculptures that you can actually climb on to experience.
On the water – water, water everywhere…and you can make
the most of it by renting almost any vessel to get yourself around the lakes, canals, rivers and sea… most of the time you will not need a license for whatever you want to rent, just take some ID, pay the fee and you
are off. Whenever the sun is shining then we rent a Sloep (and open boat for ~8 people) with our friends for a day on the water with a full chest of food and drinks. Our usual destination is to the city of Leiden – that has a network of canals running through the heart ofthis beautiful old university city. It can get quite busy on a sunny day, but take it slowly and you’ll have a great day out – pick up a boat from Vlietland Watersport Centrum (search under Direct Regelen > Boot Verhuur > Sloep) it’ll cost around 120eur for 4 hrs for 6 people. You can also pick up a much more salubrious boat from Hoogenboom Kaag that makes for a bit of a longer trip with a more plush boat for around 145 eur (8 people) ~5hrs from the lakes of the Kaag for a round trip to Leiden. Both of these locations also rent sailboats (6 person Valk) that are great fun on a windy day to skim around the lakes…and super cheap at just 30 eur for 4 hours!
More fun on the water can be had with a SUP (stand up paddleboard) around Leiden – http://www.suppeninleiden.nl, windsurfing near Rotterdam – https://www.eurofun.nl/en/; kite surfing in Noordwijk – http://kitesurfschoolnoordwijk.nl/ and even surfing in the waves of Scheveningen at Hart Beach suf school… although don’t expect to catch huge waves and pipes!
Museums – a little bit more sedentary than above but just as much fun. The Netherlands has around 700 museums within its small borders and
nearly 400 of these can be visited free of charge if you get the Dutch museum card , you don’t need to be local and you can pick it up at some of the main museums in the country – within about 4 trips it will be well and truly
paid for. Now the thought of centuries of history and dusty museums may not appeal to us all, but the museum card is the perfect excuse to go and explore the ‘lost’ corners of the Netherlands, so as well as the museum kings of Van Gogh, Rijks and Maurithuis (which is probably the best picture gallery in the world!) you will also get a chance to visit the Panorama Mesdag – a 360 degree 19th century landscape of Scheveningen beach, housed in its own building with a glass roof so the light from outside will change the effects of the picture; The Genever museum of Schiedam – where you also get Genever (Ducth Gin) tasting in the entrance ticket; The Planetarium in Franekker, where Eise Eisinga built a complete planetarium in the ceilings of the rooms in his house, a wonderful thing to see, especially where planets need to move between rooms; a Clog (Klompen) museum…naturally. You will also find some great outdoor museums
spread across the country that are well worth a visit – our favourite being the Netherlands Open Air museum near Arnhem – this will keep you busy for a whole day at least, and you will find all different architectures of NL, so large that they have their own tram that will carry you to the different areas of the park; The Zuiderzee museum that depicts a traditional Dutch fishing village, back when the afsluitdijk was not in place and this area still faced the open sea (the zuiderzee); finally Zaanse Schans – being close to Amsterdam this should probably fall ‘on the beaten track’, but if you want to see windmills but don’t have time to get to Kinderdijk (below) then this is your spot, along with an original Albert Hijn supermarket – no chance of online delivery here!
Windmills – yes we have some windmills you can visit…over 1000 at the
last count! The ultimate windmill destination is Kinderdijk, just to the south of Rotterdam. A bit tricky to get to, so a car is best, or you can pick up a water bus from Rotterdam or Dordrecht. It’s a tourist hotspot, but don’t let that stop you as you’ll find this Unesco site with 19 mills all spinning their hearts out for you and your pictures. If you are lucky and visit during winter (not usually words that go together in a phrase) then you may also get frozen canals to frolic and skate on right by these iconic landmarks. Other great windmill spots are in Schiedam (combine with the Genever museum) with huge windmills that marked the city walls – another reason to visit these windmills is to have lunch at the excellent Yokohama Ramen Saito where the homemade noodles and perfect soup are some of the best outside of Japan; and in Leiden on your sloep ride around the city you’ll get to cruise past these beautiful old monuments, with most of them still turning.
The Wadden – circling the western coast of the Netherlands are the Wadden islands – Texel, Terschelling, Vlieland, Ameland and Schiermonnikoog. We’ve only done two of the islands – Ameland and Schiermonnikoog, but the others are definitely on the list. To get to Ameland we did the wonderfully
unique wadlopen – basically when the tide goes out you can pick up an organised tour to walk the 10km from the mainland to the Island, racing the tide coming back in! On the day we did it we were blessed with warm weather and a rewarding sunset at the end of the hike. Make sure you wear some cheap Converse style sneakers… otherwise the mud will suck anything else off your feet and don’t take big bags of stuff, unless you are ready to carry it on your head. It’s a very cool trip – more info here – and once you have made it across to the island you’ll be chauffeured on the back of a tractor trailer to Nes where you can either spend the night or catch the ferry back to the mainland (which we did). For Schiermonnikoog we took the more traditional return ferry, but first you need to make your way up to the north coast of NL for this trip. You’ll be rewarded
Bloemen – Tulips from Amsterdam,
it sounds like a cliche, but come springtime the country really is blooming with flowers all over. Now, you can go to the Disney world of flowers – Keukenhof – but we prefer to avoid the crowds (and the ticket prices) to go direct to the bulb fields around Noordwijkerhout or Lisse, where you can park your car up and enjoy the flowers for free… but do try to keep out of the rows of the fields themselves (just send your drone across) and don’t go on picking spree as you’ll find you can buy flowers really cheap in NL. Typically, the flowers will start blooming around mid April, and if you are lucky you may also get a bit of sunshine to enjoy it around this time. In the middle of the month you can also catch
the flower parade that goes all the way from Noordwijk to Haarlem, so you can find yourself a nice spot along the route, break out the lekker boterham (tasty ham sandwich) and an ice-cold Heineken and watch all the floats pass by.
Fireworks – fireworks are pretty much banned for private use for most of the year in NL, but then for New
Year’s eve the restrictions are lifted and the whole country goes firework crazy. Whole families will head across the boarder to Belgium to pick up the biggest and loudest fireworks that money can buy and at the strike of midnight millions of euros explode into the sky; find yourself a NYE party that has a good view of whichever city you are in and be amazed by all the pyrotechnics that sparkle across the sky. If you can’t wait for New Year then the August International Fireworks festival in Scheveningen is a great spectacle… just be prepared for some adverse weather as this time of year is prone to some erratic summer storms!
Lekker lekker – the best word in the Dutch language is Lekker – roughly translates to ‘tasty’ but is used to describe almost everything – lekker hapjes – tasty snacks, lekker weer – nice weather, lekker ding – cute / hottie! In this case let’s focus on these tasty snacks and some 
wider cuisine in NL. Much like the UK, the Netherlands is not so world-famous for its cuisine, but there are a number of things that are still unique and tasty to this part of the world…usually these items go best with dutch beer, but not always: Kroket – mashed potato and meat ragout that is breaded and deep fried, Bitterballen (like mini round croquettes); Kaas fondue – not the Swiss variety, rather cheese in breadcrumbs deep fried (there is a deep fried theme here!); Erwten soup – more of a winter thing, is Dutch pea soup with ham, it may not sound it but it’s one of Matt’s favourite things about the winter; Poffertjes – mini little fluffy pancakes that are served hot with butter and powdered sugar; Beschuit met muisjes – not really a snack or food, rather whenever a Dutch 
friend / colleague has a baby then they break out the beschuit – a dry biscuit (rusk) that is buttered and then sprinkled with sugar coated anise seeds – blue for a boy, pink for a girl – one of Matt’s favourite things to keep him in the office. There are plenty of other Dutch dishes that we shall let you find out for yourself. If these snacks leave you wanting more, then NL does have some excellent restaurants from across the world, some of our favourites include (it’s no coincidence that a lot of these are Asian!)- Fou Fow Ramen in Amsterdam – probably the most authentic ramen we’ve had outside of Japan; Yokohama Ramen in Schiedam (above); Little V Vietnamese in The Hague and Rotterdam, with some great cocktails and fresh tastes; Sushi Morikawa in the Hague for authentic Japanese served in a cosy environment; And if Lyssa is feeling homesick, there’s Baryo Pilipinas to enjoy traditional and authentic Filipino comfort food and San Miguel beers and the chance to socialise with some friendly local Filipinos in The Hague; The Hofftrammm of the Hague – for a unique tram dining experience with great food and all drinks included – book well in advance; Yama in Rotterdam, a most amazing Japanese restaurant that you really need to book months in advance; and our local in the Hague Mingle Mush, a kind of food hall that has incredibly fresh Thai food as well as plenty of other choices and a great bar serving all sorts of Dutch beer. One last option that combines both a bit of a tour of a Dutch city and food and drinks is to take a walking food tour with Wijn & Spijs a walking dinner that takes place in a a different city each week, a perfect way to combine our three favourite things… travelling, eating and drinking! Enjoy!