We would like to introduce Giethoorn to you as locals. This authentic Dutch place is located in the Northeastern part of the Netherlands. It is 85 minutes drive by car from Amsterdam, our capital city of the Netherlands. Yearly 1 million people are visiting Giethoorn. Therefore, it is ranked in the top 10 of cities being visited in the Netherlands. The village is well known in the Netherlands but also far beyond. Because, we have visitors from all over the world. In conclusion, it is hard to name a country where nobody from that country has visited Giethoorn. It is not that the locals cannot afford a car but that they simply cannot park in front of their door.

This is because the village was created 800 years ago  by manually searching for peat. In fact, the locals at that time dug by hand and created a complete channel system. In conclusion, with all this  digging all islands were  created. After that, these islands have been connected  by 176 walking / cycling bridges and the current thatched houses were built on those islands. After that, the cars arrived in the Netherlands, but the old village not at all suitable for car traffic. The locals voted to preserve the old. Therefore, the decision was made to leave the village intact and this created the car-free zone of the Dutch village. Our ancestors probably never expected that all that digging would eventually be the basis for 1 of the bussiest tourist hot spots in the Netherlands.

Zwolle, Steenwijk, Heerenveen and Meppel  are located near Giethoorn.