Utrecht, Netherlands

22 Apr, 2026

This is the city-exploration part of my experiences in Utrecht. A post about the PKM Summit 2026 will soon follow.

When I travel, I want to see the history and culture of a place. I look out for unique experiences, vegan food and nice people. At an affordable price.
Utrecht has been a joy to visit! I found the city to be very beautiful with all the small houses and charming pavement. A lot of it's history can still be seen today. The city is relatively small, so you can walk everywhere and stumble upon little gems around every corner. The Domplein (Dom Square) with the tower and underground tours is an organized and unique way to find out about the city's history.

🧭 Discoveries

I did a GPS based audio tour of the city. My audio guide sent me on a route from point to point in the city, commenting about what I was seeing. This way I was able to focus on my surroundings without being distracted by a map. I felt structured and wanderous at the same time: I knew there was a path laid out, but I could also stroll into side quests along the way. This resulted in a strong sense of orientation, which was a great base for the rest of my trip. Usually I struggle with orientation, but this did the trick!

🎈 VoiceMap was my app of choice. The tour was by Jeff Jansen and named Uniquely Utrecht: A Guide to its Charming City Centre.

• ＋ City Center with Domplein (Dom Square with the Tower)
• ＋ Historical and Cultural insights (could have been even more in-depth)
• 3-4 hours with all my stops, should be 90min without stops

I found some great places along the way:

• 🎈🌱 Bureaubewusst – Cute Eco Friendly Office Supply and Trinkets Store
  • I discovered reusable snack bags with waterproof lining, which is exactly what I needed! A light and compact container for when I have sandwiches or fruits to transport and want to protect my bag from them.
• 🎈📚 Lit. English Bookshop – English Bookstore with "Blind Dates"
  • I've got two blind dates: books wrapped in paper with only a few words written on them to describe their contents. I adore this idea and the books I've got turned out to be really well fitting!

• 🥑 FLFL – (really good) Vegan Falafel
• 🎈📚 Boekhandel-Antiquariaat Aleph – Antique Books Store with very nice people

Outside of the tour, I also visited some places I would recommend. They are close to the city center and the tour route as well:

• 🎈 Domplein Tours – Climb Tower and explore the Underground
  • The booking website is a bit of a pain but it's worth it. And affordable.
  • The view from the tower is great!
  • DOMunder is in the dark and you can point to spots in the excavation site with your audio flashlight, which then tells you about what you are pointing at.

• 🥑 Restaurant Gys Utrecht – Vegan Restaurant with many uncommon tiny dishes
• 🥑 Life's a Peach – Vegan Bakery with a furniture side-gig
• 🥑 Vegitalian – Vegetarian Italian Restaurant
• 🛏️ Hostel Stayokay Utrecht – Hostel with nice Storage Lockers and Friendly Staff
  • Lockers
    • They've got a locker room accessed by a key card you get at the reception. Free version is in a big room, pay 2.- for a locker. Feels very safe. I used it before I got the room and after I checked out.
    • In the room they've got locker boxes that you can close with your own lock.
  • Felt safe and welcome
    • You have to use your keycard multiple times: to get into the stairwell, the floor area, your room. This all felt very comforting and safe to me.
    • 24h reception with friendly staff
  • Room
    • Room felt nice, clean and calm.
    • Beds have plenty of power outlets, a little light, half of the bed has a shield but no curtains that would go all the way through.
    • I was unlucky with one room mate, but this was not the hostel's fault.

This list only includes my favourites. I excluded every place I would not recommend or that did not have a lasting impression on me.

Plans for Next Time

I had some other promising places on my list that I plan on going to next time:

• 🎈 Anoma Art Maze – promises a unique sensory experience
• 🎈 Paleis Lofen – another underground tour at the Domplein
• 🥑 KLUTS koffie & vegan bakkerij
• 🎈 Fish Doorbell – Gate for fishies to go through with an interactive website (link to the map here)
• 🎈 The only thing that is quite a ride away from Utrecht, but may worth considering if you visit the Netherlands in general: Corpus Museum – a tour around and inside the human body

🇳🇱 About the Netherlands

Media I watched to prepare:

• 📺 Europe from Above by National Geographic: S1;E1 The Netherlands
• 📺 Defending Europe by National Geographic: S1;E5 The Netherlands
• I also tried some podcasts and other media but there was nothing really satisfying.

A cool fact that I learned about the Netherlands: they are below sea level so they had to find ways to manage the water. This lead to really cool stuff like strategies to keep land dry with windmills.

🧠✨ Neurodivergent Corner

• As the city is very compact, I was able to go to the hostel to recharge every now and then. This felt very helpful.
• There are many little streets and it felt like the people distribute nicely throughout the city. In the morning it was a delight, with not many people already walking around.
• Preparing beforehand was impactful for me. I did not have FOMO, as I clearly laid out my priorities and sketched matching activity-blocks in advance.
• Prepare your internet and have a backup solution.
  • I like to have unlimited data on my travels, as this gives me one less thing to worry about. I feel safer this way and do not waste time searching for free wifi. It makes me more flexible, spontaneous. And it is safer than public wifi.
  • I thought I had 2GB of roaming from my internet provider but it did not work somehow. For my piece of mind and not loosing time on this annoying issue, I decided to go for a travel e-sim with unlimited data for 5 days for $17. I could have searched for a cheaper local sim, but my piece of mind was worth it. I used two different apps in the past for travel e-sim, I recommend you to just look up travel e-sim providers, compare prices and conditions and choose a matching one.

🔎👀 Searching For

What I could not find yet:

• A book written by a local author or that plays in Utrecht. The only ones close to this were too brutal for me.
• Documentaries or other engaging media specifically about Utrecht

Conversation Corner

📮🦈 Send me an email with:

• recommendations in Utrecht (for my next visit and to add to this post) – see the things I'm searching for 👀
• questions about Utrecht (maybe I can answer, otherwise I can ask friends or share here in this post)
• thoughts you want to share

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