Updated 2025

Netherlands Travel Stories

My Netherlands travel stories begin on my inaugural Dutch travel adventures in 2018 and continue the following year on a BeNeLux solo adventure. The stories intersect with global history and culture and I have an interesting experience having “ohhh!” moments during my travels.

I am in such awe of The Netherlands: a small country with significant impact – positive and negative – on all corners of the globe, and still influencing history and culture today.

On my second solo trip to The Netherlands, I get the bright idea to seek out little known (mostly to me!) Netherlands travel stories and “firsts” when I discover on a day trip to Keukenhof that tulips are not originally Dutch. Quelle horreur! *it’s French, I know*.

My discovery unearths a number of fascinating “firsts” most people do not know of and it is interesting to realize the Dutch scope of influence over centuries. Enjoy these Netherlands travel stories curated during my Dutch travel adventures as I enjoy discovering them myself.

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Netherlands Travel Stories

#Tulips of Keukenhof

Yes, you read right.

The world famous tulip bulbs of The Netherlands is not originally Dutch; it is, in fact, Turkish! I learn this on an Amsterdam canal cruise recounting the history of the city and The Netherlands, and I am floored. How am I just knowing of this, as an avid bookworm and lover of history and culture?

Fast forward to my second Amsterdam travel where I am fortunate to experience the tulips of Keukenhof on a day trip from Amsterdam. Even though I lack a green thumb, Keukenhof is high on my Dutch travel adventures list and I don’t miss the opportunity to experience this sight.

Back to how the tulip becomes Dutch: it goes that in 1594, Clusius receives tulip bulbs from Turkey which he plants in the garden of Leiden University and when they bloom, they become so popular that they induce the first recorded economic bubble!

 

But how Turkish was the tulip prior to its export to The Netherlands?

The tulip bulb we know was originally very high class in its native Turkey where the period between 1718-1730 was known as the Tulip Era, an era of peace and enjoyment.

Tulips are so common within the Turkish lifestyle that they are embroidered into clothing, woven into carpet, painted on tiles and tapestries and incorporated into folklore. The end of this peaceful era comes in 1730 with a revolt.

Fun facts About Keukenhof

• Keukenhof means kitchen garden and is so-called because Countess van Bieren gathered food from the gardens for her castle way back in the 15th century.
• Keukenhof became a collective of tulip farmers collaborating to create a permanent tulip exhibition that opens in 1950 and becomes a global attraction. Tulip bulbs hold value in The Netherlands as half are for export with the other half re-planted in October to bloom in time for the next Keukenhof show between March and May.
• The Netherlands produces 3 million tulip bulbs of which 80% is for export. This explains the tulips I see in New York City in the spring.

Tulips are considered the “King of Bulbs.”

 

 

 

Netherlands Travel Stories

#Economic Bubble – Tulipmania

Remember how popular tulips are in Leiden and all over The Netherlands? This petal popularity leads to an economic bubble in an era where they do not exist. What a concept to unintentionally create!

How did tulips cause an economic bubble in the 17th century?

Tulip bulbs are so popular with certain bulb varieties costing a fortune that they become legal tender with some “smart” folks exchanging one tulip bulb for a whole house! With what we know of markets today, it comes as no shock when speculations rise, the bubble bursts, and people lose assets in the winter of 1637.

This historic event is known as Tulipmania.

Alas, one of the unfortunates is the Mayor of Amsterdam, who loves tulips so much that he changes his name from Pieterszoon to Dr. Tulip. Talk about Tulipmania!

Fast forward a couple of centuries, some financial historians dispute the stories of rampant bankruptcies, suicides and fall of the Dutch Republic relating to the tulip crash, by saying that only the wealthy participated in tulipmania and could weather losses until bulbs bloomed in spring and they got paid, thus resuming the cycle.

We have the Dutch to thank for starting the first economic bubble that I learn about on my Dutch travel adventures.

 

Netherlands Travel Stories

#Clocks

The Dutch invented clocks?!

Well, they invented wall clocks, pendulum clocks, turret clocks, and even the mechanics within them.

How do I discover this? Read on for this interesting Netherlands travel story.

I take a day trip to the Dutch countryside of Zaandam, Zaanse Schans, and Volendam, and it is while wandering Zaanse Schans that I see the cutest building ever that is typical of The Netherlands and its stunning architecture.

This building happens to be the Zaanse Schans Clock Museum that grants free entry with an iamsterdam card and you know how I cannot pass up a museum. I enter a cramped space full of clocks and their histories to learn about the firsts that this town spawns over the centuries.

Pendulum Clock.

A scientist, Christiaan Huygens, invents the pendulum clock in 1656 and a couple of years later, Kornelis Volger, Zaanse clockmaker starts mass-producing pendulum clocks for domestic use. Entrepreneurs in the Zaanse area create cheap clocks for market thus inventing the famous Zaanse clock.

Wall Clock

Another famous Dutch invention is the wall clock, said to have been invented prior to the pendulum clock. The wall clock is so well crafted with birdcage movement that it is very expensive in its time. Add to it pendulum movement and music, it is a unique sight to locals at the time.

Foliot and Balance Wheel

The mechanical clock, where these cogs and wheels feature, is introduced in the 13th century to churches and monasteries. They are powered by weights and coiled spring and the dial has only an hour hand. The oldest example of a foliot and wheel mechanical clock is the tower clock at the Salisbury Cathedral, England.

 

Netherlands Travel Stories

#Windmills

In 1592, a farm boy called Cornelis Cornelisz, invents a wood-sawing windmill, which he sells to a Zaandam miller. The Zaanse area is already booming with the timber industry and this unique invention helps in simplifying the labour-intensive work that is wood sawing.

Thus, you can imagine the wealthy entrepreneurs that show interest in this new-fangled invention. They form a cooperative to improve the mechanics and development of the windmill and from there, spawn the creation of hundreds of Zaanse windmills.

 

Stock Market

#VOC Dutch Trading Company

The Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) or Dutch East Indian Trading Company, was founded in 1602 at the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age.

In the 17th century, the Dutch flourish in seafaring, spice trade from Africa and Asia, and art, to the envy of their rival European brethren.

Since seafaring is a treacherous occupation – enslavement and colonization of land and people was oftentimes fraught with piracy, diseases, and loss – the VOC offers to spread these commodity risks for its wealthy patrons.

They offer noblemen the opportunity to buy a part of an expedition instead of funding the whole thing, to minimize risk in the event of losses. That way, the nobles’ investments are still recouped with the high demand for spices and produce from pillaged regions.

 

Enter… the stock market!

This Netherlands travel story reminds me of exchange traded funds (ETFs) where you buy a “basket” of variety stocks instead of risking all on a single stock. In fact, a good financial advisor will advise on ETFs instead of single corporation stocks.

You can imagine the fortune the VOC generates with noblemen financing their expeditions and reaping dividends in return. One can even argue that the idea of a diversified portfolio starts from The Netherlands!

For example, the VOC trades heavily in Java (the name for Indonesia at the time) spices, they touch Papua New Guinea, “discover” New Zealand – pretty sure the Micronesian population were already present – and definitely transport enslaved Africans from West Africa to Dutch Guiana (Suriname) and the former Netherlands Antilles.

 

Netherlands Travel Stories

#New Zealand

Throughout my Dutch travel adventures, I see the word “Zeeland” referring to a province bordering Belgium that is sparsely populated but I do not actively connect it with anything.

So, imagine my surprise when I read on one of many museum tours that New Zealand was “discovered” by a Dutch seafaring captain.

As with most colonized regions, native people are present when the first European, a Dutch captain named Abel Tasman, “discovers” what we know now as New Zealand in 1642. Even though he is the first European to see it, he doesn’t land on the island but charts its coast. James Cook is the first European to set foot ashore New Zealand in the 1760s.

 

Netherlands Travel Stories

#Bonus “First”

There is a Mauritshuis House in The Hague and I have the same idea as Zeeland and wonder if the Dutch have anything to do with the island of Mauritius. Apparently, they do! The Dutch discover Mauritius in the 1590s but abandon it in the 1700s.

An aside: Mauritshuis House has permanent displays of famous art from the Dutch Golden Age including the Anatomy Lesson of Nicholas Tulp. Remember him? He’s the Mayor of Amsterdam that lost money during Tulipmania.

 

Last Word

I thoroughly enjoy discovering and devouring these Netherlands travel stories from the inventions of Zaanse Schans windmills and clocks to the European “discovery” of two islands.

There is much to see and experience in The Netherlands beyond Amsterdam and I get ideas of Dutch towns to explore and enjoy from iamsterdam.

If you’re a history buff like me, book museum tours like this Red Light Secrets one, go on guided tours like this scenic day trip Giethoorn boat tour, and partake in culture, like this Dutch waffle syrup making workshop. You’ll be surprised at the little known stories and the number of artifacts that we attribute to one country that belong to another, like tulips.

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