A closer look
Giethoorn is a wildly popular, ridiculously scenic village in the Netherlands that completely lacks any traditional paved roads, forcing everyone to travel strictly by boat. Commonly marketed as the Venice of the North, this impossibly quaint settlement was constructed around a complex network of shallow, dug-out peat canals, meaning the local postman legitimately delivers your mail on a tiny, quiet punt. Of course, the modern reality of this supposed tranquil paradise is a chaotic nightmare of incredibly loud, wildly inexperienced tourists drunkenly crashing their rented electric boats into the fragile wooden docks of deeply irritated locals. What was originally designed as a peaceful, eco-friendly agricultural community has predictably devolved into a massive, water-logged bumper-car arena for confused international visitors trying to get the perfect selfie. It beautifully proves that no matter how elegantly you design a utopian car-free village, the sheer destructive power of mass tourism will always find a way
