Giethoorn
“It is a fairy tale setting, you’ll like it” is how the owner of de Harmonie described his village, as we were renting bicycles from him. For a moment I thought he was kidding, because the only ones I had seen until now were either in the creations of Disney and Pixar, or in Albert Uderzo’s drawings.
The first known inhabitants apparently were refugees from Mediterranean regions who settled around 1200. While cultivating their lands, they found large quantities of horns of wild goats that had drowned in St. Elizabeth’s flood of 1170. They called their settlement ‘Geytenhoren’ (Goathorns)—known today as Giethoorn.
The difference between Uderzo’s little Gaulish village, and Giethoorn is that one is a lucid imagination set in 50BC, while the other is a blissful reality today. Oh, there’s another. Uderzo’s village didn’t have canals, whereas Giethoorn is abound with them. It is not known as ‘Green Venice’ or ‘Venice of the North’ for nothing.
For a place—that can easily give Venice a run for its money—there’s little publicly available information, that it is surprising. In fact, we only learned about it via the word of mouth. Like Getafix’s magic potion, this is perhaps the best kept Dutch secret getaway.
We spent a whale of time cycling, boating around a large number of interconnected waterways in an electric eco-friendly boat.
Beulakerweg 55, 8355 AB Giethoorn, NL.