Gouda Cheese Experience — Attraction in Gouda

I had a fantastic time at the Gouda Cheese Experience! I actually arrived a little early, and the manager was already there, kindly waiting to open up. Instead of just brushing me off until opening time, he chatted with me for a good ten minutes — we talked about where I was from, world issues, and of course, cheese. He was incredibly friendly and welcoming, which really set the tone for the whole visit.

Inside, the experience is both interactive and informative. The manager encouraged me to fill out the little cheese-themed activity sheet they give you, and I'm glad I did — it made me engage more with the exhibits. I ended up spending about 1.5 hours going through everything and reading all the displays. There was someone who rushed through in like 10 minutes, but honestly, this isn’t something to speed through. You get much more out of it by taking your time. Also, during the tour, if you answer all the answers on your paper, you get to become a "cheese master." 😁

At the end of the tour, there’s a great cheese tasting session, and you also have the chance to buy some cheese. Just a heads-up: if you're flying outside of Europe, you can’t bring back the full cheese wheels due to customs regulations. But the vacuum-sealed cheese is totally fine to bring home. I bought a wheel for myself and ended up snacking on it during my drive across the Netherlands — and it was delicious!

Highly recommend this experience if you're in Gouda. Great staff, great cheese, and a great way to learn about a big part of...

Lots of fun, lots of information, very inspiring experience.

It’s type of museum but let’s say.. moving, speaking, overall very active museum.

Each room, you can hear pretty everything about history of Gouda cheese, how the cheese is made, kept, etc.

It was very interesting to learn about zero to all about Gouda cheese, became more interested in Dutch cheese. How good marketing it is! I got a lot of inspiration seeing this, learning how much visual and auditory stimulation can affect customers to get more attention to the product 😂

Very Academic, it was like a school lecture. Lots of information is spoken through the audio guide, and you need to pay good attention since you’ll get a exam sheet to choose the correct answer after hearing audio guide. I was too busy listening, seeing, moving around and tasting….(not good at multitasking)

At the end, the staff will check your answer and if you’re good enough, you will get a badge of “cheese master”

Also In the last part of the tour, you can taste few cheese slices learning how different they are by time of fermentation🧀 👅(my favorite it was)

There’s also a shop inside, so you can check the cheese products and buy them.

I personally liked little baby cheese(soft) bites, that was delicious. I combined it with a little fig jam they were selling. Very tasty!

It looked very smart way to widespread the information of the Gouda cheese to global visitors.

When you’re around Gouda, or traveling the Netherlands, don’t forget to visit.

Reservation is...

I could see the Gouda Cheese Experience being fun if you were going with all adults. But it's a tough experience with Children.

First they give you a phone-like device for listening to the tour and a quiz that you'll want to accomplish as you go though the exhibit to become a "Cheese Master." Which sounds like a fun little experience in theory.

In practice though, this quiz is not easy to accomplish. There are confusing questions in the quiz and some of them are easy to pass without ever seeing the answers to them. I feel like the quiz portion really detracts from the experience of the exhibit - making you focus on these questions rather than just learning about cheese and having fun.

If you have a child with you, they'll be bored out of their minds while you are sitting there holding this device to your ear, listening for an answer to this quiz on a clipboard that you have to carry around with you. - not very fun.

Trying the cheese was a good experience though, learning how it's made and how much cheese the world consumes, etc. is pretty cool trivia. But I think the experience could be a little more kid-friendly and the process of doing the quiz could be a little easier. Also less people per group would be better, I think. There were too many people in the tour and it was the summer so the rooms would get really stuffy while waiting.

It's really more of a one-of thing to do. Once you've done it, there's not much to bring you back for...