Travel archive:
Holland – Tracing the Dutch Masters
and the origin of the Mayflower

Gustav lived in Holland for several years and continues to be fascinated by the richness of this small and compact country – its culture, art, architecture, and history, as well as its international cuisine and thoughtful everyday solutions.

  • May–June
    September

  • Cosmopolitan city pulse, charming towns and villages, the legacy of the Mayflower and some of the great highlights of European art, unique engineering features, the great blossom of spring.

  • Amsterdam and beyond – the footsteps of Rembrandt, Vermeer Den Bosch, van Gogh, and Escher, The Mayflower Congregation, charming university town Leiden, the world-famous porcelain of Delft, medieval town of Maastricht, the Indonesian cuisine(!), delicious seafood, tulip mania.

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Large parts of the Netherlands lie below sea level, a condition that has shaped an extraordinary level of ingenuity and engineering over centuries. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) played a significant role not only for the Netherlands itself but for the wider world, something reflected in historic names such as New Holland, New Amsterdam, and Kaapstad.

We naturally visit Amsterdam, but also travel to the much older city of Utrecht, the charming town of Delft, the leafy Hague, and the distinctly modern city of Rotterdam. The distances are short, and the cities are easily connected by local trains or private transport.

We walk in the footsteps of The Old Masters and stay in Leiden, Rembrandt’s birthplace and home of the Mayflower congregation prior to the voyage across the Atlantic – a refined university town where figures such as Albert Einstein once worked. From here, we move easily through the landscape of canals and windmills.

Along the way, we enjoy local specialties and the Dutch kitchen, which ranges from simple pleasures such as herring served in bread to Indonesian influences shaped by history – and, of course, exceptional cheese from Gouda.