In June 2019, my boyfriend and I drove to the Netherlands for a little Surf & Camping Trip. We didn’t find any waves, but we still enjoyed our time. After spending the week on the campsite, we visited friends in Amsterdam for the weekend. All about this (and where we parked our van for free) will be in another blogpost.
We stayed at Camping Corfwater in Petten, which was okay, but next time we will choose another place to stay. It was very crowded because parts of Germany had a public holiday (which we totally forgot, because our state doesn’t have a free day). We enjoyed that it was so close to the beach, but the wifi was pretty bad, our place on the campsite didn’t have power (still full price) and overall, we didn’t love it. But we did daytrips everyday and enjoyed the (mostly) sunny and warm weather.
FYI: We researched a little and found out that sleeping in the car and camping in the wild is not allowed in the Netherlands, so staying on a campsite is the safe option.
Alkmaar was one of our favorite cities, where we found some nice coffee shops and little restaurants: De Koffiemolen was beautiful, as well as Living Roots and Sencha Lunchstore. Besides the food, it’s also a good-sized city to walk around and explore.
On another day, we visited Den Helder, after a short visit in Schagen. We walked around, had a late lunch and coffee at Robuust and did some grocery shopping.
Our favorite place for groceries was Jumbo in Alkmaar, which had a very big selection of vegetarian and vegan products at affordable prices. We tried the vegan salmon and satay schnitzel (both good!), always along with veggies and pasta or rice.
