This year I literally saw in the New Year with a bang, as I celebrated New Year’s Eve in the Netherlands visiting a friend in Den Haag. She had warned me about a few odd Dutch traditions for New Year, but I was unprepared for the level of crazy my New Year celebrations in the Netherlands would bring!

Here are just a few (insane) ways the Dutch like to celebrate New Year and my exhausting experience celebrating New Year’s Eve in The Hague:

After booking a last-minute flight to the Netherlands to spend New Year with a friend living in The Hague, I found myself being roped into the Nieuwjaarsduik Scheveningen. So, while you were nursing your New Year’s Eve hangover, I was taking a plunge into the North Sea as part of Den Haag’s New Year’s Day swim!

This is the story of how I was peer-pressured into running down Scheveningen Beach in nothing but my swimming cossie and an orange hat on the 1^st January, wondering how I’d wound up in Holland, throwing myself into the icy waves on Nieuwjaarsdag (New Year’s Day).

Last December, I broke the cardinal rule of travelling. I went to a place and saw nothing. I didn’t visit the museums. I didn’t sample the local food. I didn’t pose outside the famous landmarks (except the Amsterdam sign, we at least managed to do that so that’s something!) Read more