Meet Gerrit,
your local in the Netherlands

What I do

I help travelers connect with the Netherlands and skip the usual tourist mistakes: the overpriced tiktok hypes, booking certain tickets too late, choosing the wrong neighborhood, or the day trip that eats half a morning in a tourist shop. I do that three ways.

Travel guides. In-depth articles on Dutch cities, attractions, culture, and how to get around, with the local tips you only pick up growing up, and living here. I have been to these places, and experienced them firsthand. Nobody told me what I could write.

A membership, 1-on-1 planning calls, and itinerary reviews. Send me your draft plan and I tell you what to keep, what to cut, and how to pace it. Or book a call and we build the trip together around your interests, your time, and your budget. Or join the membership: a live group call each month, plus email your questions in between.

Private tours. A day out with a local who pulls back the curtain on how the Dutch live. No penguins, but a real restaurant, with Dutch regulars and Dutch food. Windmills and countryside, yes, kept as far from the tour buses as I can manage. Tulip fields to the horizon, the kind where Dutch cyclists stop and 600 Instagrammers don’t. Or the Hoge Veluwe and the Kröller-Müller Museum, with an optional dinner in a watermill Van Gogh painted. Not for everyone. But there’s no better way to see the country.

Why trust me

I am Dutch, and I go to the places I write about. When I recommend a museum, a town, or a time of year, it is from having been there, not from a press release.

I put your trip ahead of my commission. If the honest answer costs me an affiliate sale, you still get the honest answer. I will tell you not to rent a bike in Amsterdam if that is the right call, and to tap your own contactless card on the train instead of buying a marked-up ticket through a booking site.

The work is out in public and other people vouch for it. I spoke at TBEX North America 2026 in Richmond, VA, the largest conference for travel content creators, and I have been a guest on travel podcasts for American and expat audiences. You can see and hear all of it on my media and press page.

I studied Tourism Management and hold a bachelor’s degree in it. I also passed the Cambridge English C1 Advanced exam. So you can expect clear communication when we work together.

I visit two to four Dutch museums a month, usually ones I have already written about, because collections and exhibitions always change. Herman proofreads what I publish, and I aim to give every article a full review once a year.

My story

The love for travel started with my grandmother. I still remember the big railroad map at The Hague Central Station and being handed the choice of where we would go for the day. Pick a dot, ride the train, come home full of it. That was the whole game, and I was hooked.

I kept pushing the boundaries as I got older. At 17 I flew to the USA on my own to visit a pen pal, back when a pen pal meant paper, a dictionary, and a lot of patience. Later I spent half of four years living in Burbank, California, working in Holland for six months to fund the other six abroad. America became my second home, and I learned my English there, the everyday kind you cannot get from a textbook.

Then came the years of building a business, an e-commerce store that grew far bigger and more demanding than I ever planned. I loved the making part, less so the grind. And underneath it, a quieter idea kept tugging: to show people the Netherlands beyond the clichés. I launched Hidden Holland in 2019, months before the pandemic. Terrible timing. The site went quiet and the dream went on hold.

Late 2022 forced the decision. After a brutal stretch of work, my body gave out, and days before Christmas I was in a hospital bed with a team of doctors around me. Stuck in that room, I decided to make it a little Christmas oasis and became, for a while, Chief of the Christmas Lights. Mostly I had time to think, which I had not had in years.

Two decisions came out of it: close the e-commerce business, and give Hidden Holland everything. That is what I do now. I travel the country and experience its towns and attractions firsthand more than ever, often with my partner Herman, and I feel like the luckiest guy alive doing it. My goal is simple: that everyone who comes here gets the real Dutch experience.

See the real Netherlands

If you want to see the Netherlands from a local’s perspective, find the real hot spots beyond the TikTok craze, take postcard-perfect photos, and learn the culture behind the country, then you’re in the right place.

Welcome to Hidden Holland. Let me help you explore the Netherlands like a local.