Rick Steves Says This Tourist Trap In The Netherlands Is A Mix Of 'Killarney With Coney Island'

High-pointed women's bonnets. A dike lined with colorful houses. Giant wheels of Gouda cheese. These are some of the images we equate with traditional Dutch-ness, and they're among the cultural clichés compressed into the small village of Volendam, about 20 minutes north of Amsterdam by bus. While travel expert Rick Steves has touted the neighboring city of Edam as one of the best day trips from Amsterdam, his attitude towards Volendam is a little less favorable. He ranked the entire city on his list of "Top 10 European Tourist Traps," calling the town a mix of "Killarney with Coney Island" for its kitschy character and one particular museum.

Steves' gripe with Volendam, as it turns out, has a lot to do with this museum, the Volendam Museum. In another blog post about the broader region, Steves also singled out the museum, calling it "hokey yet charming" with a "sour-looking Statue of Liberty" made of cigars in its attached cigar-band house.

As much as Steves is a lodestar for all things European travel, one less-impressive museum and a heavy tourist presence don't necessarily paint the whole picture of Volendam. We looked at what past visitors have said online on Google Reviews and blogs, and probed some historical context, to see whether there are spots in Volendam that make it worth a visit and which truly are commercialized tourist spectacles. While it's widely agreed that tourism abounds in Volendam, it does have some local gems and playful appeal that could make this town on the northern coast of the Netherlands an attractive destination.

It's easy to write off Volendam's Dutch tropes as tourist lures, but, to be fair, Volendam's history and its ties to some of these traditions are genuine. It is, for example, where the white pointed hat (called a hul) originated, as noted in a Reuters profile, since it was part of the town's historic attire. This is one aspect of Volendam you can learn about at the Volendam Museum, which Rick Steves expressed mixed feelings towards. Some past visitors noted that they enjoyed the exhibition about local traditional garb, with one Google reviewer calling it "a surprisingly beautiful collection."

Another aspect of Volendam's history that might get overshadowed by its busy dike or souvenir shops is its role as an artists' colony. Around the late 1800s, an artist colony formed in Volendam, with the Hotel Spaander as its nucleus, as recounted in The Low Countries. Artists were deliberately courted by the hotel's owners to stay there, with studios built into the property.

The 19th-century Hotel Spaander still stands and operates in Volendam today. Even if you don't stay there overnight, you can pop in for a coffee or a beer at its Pub van Spaander to see the hundreds of paintings lining its walls, remnants from its past as an artists' colony. While reviews of the hotel rooms lean toward 3.9 stars, those that mention its atmosphere are 87% positive, according to Google Hotels, which the hotel owes at least partly to its historic legacy and paintings.

One of the standout sights of Volendam is De Dijk (the dike), a bustling promenade running along the town's coastal edge, lined with cafés, bars, and souvenir shops galore. De Dijk is also one of its most heavily touristed areas. Tour guide writer Hidden Holland called De Dijk "as touristy as it gets," noting, though, that its rows of fishermen's houses "make good photos." For what it's worth, Google Reviews rate the dike highly, with an average of 4.6 stars. Many are fond of the promenade's photogenic quality and architecture, so it could be worth it for the picture potential — just prepare to share the views with many other sightseeing, selfie-snapping day-trippers.

Otherwise, there are other towns within reach of Amsterdam that get higher praise from Rick Steves while still offering some traditionally Dutch hallmarks. In fact, one of them is the city directly next to Volendam, called Edam, which Steves highlighted as one city that samples the best of the Netherlands' cheese culture. In the same blog post where Steves calls out the "hokey" Volendam Museum, he also praises Edam as an "adorable village [that's] sweet but not saccharine" and suggests stopping at the Edam Museum. Or you could take a 10-minute train trip west of Amsterdam to Haarlem, which Steves recommends as a "quintessentially Dutch" gem with a lively market square.