Giethoorn Center — Attraction in Steenwijkerland

1st time visiting the place, so call The Netherland version of Venice, you can walk around, bike around and even take a boat tour, rent a boat or canal and go around the river surrounding the village. If you drive to the village, there are several parking lots, you will see the signboard when you almost reaching the place, park at the easiest parking lots that you encounter, that should be red and yellow zone, if you park at the green zone, then you will need to walk quite far to the central.

The village is not really that big, one day trip will be sufficient if you don't want to stay over night, you can also rent a hotel if you want to stay for longer period, please check available option online.

For boat tours, there are various options around the village, usually you can get it from restaurants in the village, you can check their boat tours schedule with restaurant staffs.

For boat and canal rental, you can see them while you walk around the village, from as cheap as 20 euro per hour to 1xx euro per hour, please don't rush making any deal 😀 you can sail the boat yourself, but frankly is not that easy if you never try it before, imagine playing "Bumper Car", this is "Bumber Boat"

Sailing thru the village via boat is not that easy, especially your 1st time sailing it, bumper into other tourist is not that bad as they understand, is different story when you bump into boat tours captain, they are not so friendly, it happen to my wife while she sail the boat and blocking their way, the boat tour captain said unpleasant stuffs and it really ruin our experience.

Overall, is a good experience to visit, there are also various restaurants around for food, and a museum to let you know the early day of Giethoorn village. Hope you have...

We visited Giethoorn in early April 2023, and it was definitely worth the day trip! (Continued👇🏻)

As we had (supposedly) booked a springtime trip, I really hoped we might see Giethoorn in bloom under blue skies, but you could persuade me that my pictures were taken in February. (Having spoken to a few Dutch natives, it seems spring this year came much later for the Netherlands than it did even for the UK!) I don't know how surprised I should be that there were QUEUES to take pictures of/with/under the only magnolia tree in Giethoorn that had already bloomed!

Although the weather was disappointing (something I obviously can't fault the village for), I can only imagine this tiny place would be absolutely HEAVING on a nicer day, so we tried to focus on the positives. Despite visiting on a full bus tour from Amsterdam, Giethoorn was comfortably quiet. We did an hour-long boat tour around the village, then had some free time. Although appreciating how quiet it was, it did mean we almost struggled to fill said free time. I expect there's a nice happy medium towards the end of April where spring is in full bloom, but the summer hordes haven't yet started arriving.

Conclusion: if you have a day you can spend in Giethoorn, I would...

The Venice of the Netherlands is a truly magical place and should be included in any visit to the Netherlands.

We visited the site as part of a group tour departing from Amsterdam which included a 1h boat ride and about 1.5h of free time to roam around the site.

We left Amsterdam central station around 10:30 and made it to the site around 12:15. We didn't hit much traffic but had to wait as several bridges where lifted to allow boats to pass.

The place can get crowded, especially during peak season. We visited during Easter week-end (peak tulip season) and the place got especially busy mid afternoon. The canals get jammed with boats and the pedestrian walkways can be hard to navigate with all the tourists taking photos.

We arrived around noon and hopped on the boat immediately which allowed us to navigate the canal peacefully. We then had lunch and finished the tour with the visit on foot.

Even though the flowers were not in bloom, we still managed to take beautiful photos thanks to the sunny day. As a tip, it can be difficult to take good photos from the boat so better focus on the experience and perhaps short videos, you'll get a chance to snap better pics while...