A Birthday Trip to the Netherlands

For the last several years, it is something of a tradition for me to travel somewhere during my birthday. For my 41st birthday back in 2024, I chose to visit the Netherlands, which was my 113th country.

Oude Kerk Netherlands — Oude Kerk Amsterdam

Some people are shocked when they learn that I had not previously been to the Netherlands considering all of the other places that I've been to in years past.

To be honest, the Netherlands is not a difficult country to visit. Like the rest of Western Europe, it is a country that is accustomed to a lot of visitors, has an excellent tourist infrastructure, and it is not likely for the average visitor to encounter any significant problems. Personally, I am not sure why I waited so long to visit the Netherlands, but it just happened the way it did. Regardless though, I was definitely not disappointed.

However, while the Netherlands trip was generally problem free and went smoothly, I made a fairly big travel mistake I had never made before but was probably bound to happen sooner or later.

I had originally booked a hotel fairly close to Amsterdam Centraal, which is the main train station. Upon arrival at Schiphol Airport, I took a train from the airport to the train station. That was easy enough, and I got to the hotel with no problems. However, when I checked in, the receptionist at the hotel could not find my reservation. I found this odd since I showed the confirmation. After looking for a bit, both the receptionist and I realized what had happened.

While I had booked the correct dates, I literally arrived at the hotel a year in advance of the scheduled dates. To this day, I still do not know how that happened since I always check everything carefully, but what happened happened. Unfortunately for me, no rooms for the time I needed were available. Therefore, I needed to find and book a new hotel while sitting in the reception area. Fortunately, I found a hotel that was reasonably priced, cheaper, and even closer to the historic center than this previous hotel.

The new hotel was better than I expected with an excellent breakfast but had thin walls. This was especially the case when it came to the couple who seemed to be from the US on a European tour across the hall. I frequently heard them arguing with each other. Typically, the girl was yelling at her boyfriend for "not considering her feelings" and "always taking but never giving" and for drinking too much. However, the boyfriend accused her of doing much cocaine despite the girl saying that she only did it once a day. The girl was mainly unhappy that despite this European trip, they had apparently only slept together twice and were doing nothing but fighting. Despite these arguments, they did actually make up later in the stay (this was known because of the thin walls).

Aside from the hotel fiasco at the start of the trip and constant albeit entertaining arguing from the couple in the room across from me, I absolutely enjoyed my time in the Netherlands.

Most of my time was spent in Amsterdam, but I also made day trips to Haarlem, Utrecht, Delft, and The Hague. During my time in the Netherlands, I had particularly wanted to visit Utrecht, which is not usually a city that is on most people's travel list. The reason for this was because when I was in graduate school for art history almost twenty years ago, my MA thesis was on the Dutch followers of the Italian painter Caravaggio. These Dutch followers mostly came from the city of Utrecht in the 16th century and lived and worked in Rome. Even though I have not been involved with art history in many years, it was amazing to check out many of the paintings that I used to write about in person.

While each place was unique in its own way, I particularly enjoyed Amsterdam both during the day and night, especially walking around the Red Light District to see the unique commercial activity that is there.

In my opinion, I thought Amsterdam had something for everyone, but I did find it to be extremely crowded even though it was supposedly shoulder season (I’m of the opinion that shoulder/low season no longer exists in some places). Haarlem, Utrecht, and Delft had historical streets and architecture that was beautiful. All three are small and super easy to walk around without fear of getting lost.

I especially enjoyed walking around Delft and seeing the places where Johannes Vermeer had spent his life. This was most notable when I was able to identify the location of an alley was shown in one of his paintings in the seventeenth century. Even though the original house was torn down centuries ago, the location seemed to fit. To be fair, I am not the original discoverer. Scholars had done research, and their conclusions point to this location, which is not very far from the Vermeer Center. That was one of my goals when I decided to make the trip to Delft.

Delft and The Hague are the place where I spent my actual 41st birthday. I was impressed with both places. I found Delft to be very historical whereas The Hague is a largely modern city with bits of history sprinkled throughout, but I definitely enjoyed the Mauritshuis, which holds tons of masterpieces. I would even say that I enjoyed it more than the Rijksmuseum. However, because it was Monday most of the museums that I wanted to visit in Delft and The Hague were closed, but that just means I will need to make a return trip in the future.

Overall, I was definitely impressed with the Netherlands, and I am glad that I had chosen to make it my birthday trip.

Please enjoy the Photo Gallery. All photos were taken by me.