Is Giethoorn worth visiting?

Short answer: yes, if you have four days or more in the Netherlands and you can be there outside the middle of the day. No, if you have two days and have not yet seen a windmill.

What it actually is

A village in Overijssel with canals where the streets would be, reached by footbridge or boat. It was built by peat diggers who cut channels to move fuel, and the waterways are what is left. About 2,800 people live there. It appears on almost every list of the prettiest villages in Europe, which is both why you have heard of it and why it has a problem.

The travel cost

It is 120 kilometres from Amsterdam — around two hours by car each way, longer by train and bus because the connection involves a change at Steenwijk and a local bus. On a coach day trip that leaves roughly two and a half hours in the village, arriving between eleven and one.

Eleven to one is the worst possible window. Every day trip from Amsterdam, and several from Germany, converge in the same two hours on a village with narrow paths.

What changes it

Before ten in the morning or after four in the afternoon, it becomes the place in the photographs. The tour boats thin out, the paths empty, and you can hear water instead of other people. The north end of the village, where residents actually live, is quiet at almost any hour and most visitors never walk that far.

This is the entire argument for going with a driver rather than on a day trip: not comfort, but arriving and leaving at hours a coach schedule cannot accommodate.

When we tell people not to go

• If you have two or three days in total. Four hours in a vehicle is a large share of a short trip. The Waterland villages are twenty minutes from Amsterdam and give you a comparable experience.
• If you are travelling with children under six. Two hours each way is a long time in a car seat.
• In July and August, midday. Unless you can commit to the early or late window, pick another day.
• If you want windmills. Giethoorn has none to speak of. That is Zaanse Schans or Kinderdijk.

When it is absolutely worth it

• A week or more in the country, with the obvious things already seen.
• Photography, in the first or last two hours of the day.
• A repeat visit to the Netherlands where you want somewhere that is not Amsterdam.
• Early spring or autumn, when the village is close to empty and the light is better.

If you go

Take a boat — an hour is enough. Walk the north end. Eat away from the main path. And do not plan anything for the evening, because it is a long drive back.