We often comment on lazy travel writing on newelty, but every once in a while, we come across a great piece by a writer who seems dedicated to and knowledgeable about the subject matter. This month’s Condé Nast Traveler includes a great piece by Raphael Kadushin on the Boemen Route in the Netherlands–a bicycle trail framed by tulips.
It’s full of vivid description, but I also enjoy how he summarizes (often misunderstood) aspects of Dutch culture:
Talk of the good life and most people picture French bistros, Tuscan trattorias, Spanish fiestas. Think of the Dutch and too many of us still conjure up caricatures: either the stoner keeling into a canal or his stone-faced opposite, the Calvinist burgher captured in all those Old Master portraits, whose thoughtful head sits on a platter of starched collar, severed from his impulsive, leaky body. But the truer Dutch sensibility combines the sensual and the brainy, and the mix led to a revolution in the glowing seventeenth century—aptly known as Holland’s Golden Age—when the Dutch merchants collected the wealth of the world and crafted the art of living exquisitely well.
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