Hedy Maessen is a staff writer at The Royal Tour. Please scroll down for an index of all of her articles here.

Hi, my name is Hedy. I was born and raised in the Netherlands and I now live in the wonderful city of Maastricht together with my partner Rudi and our cats T-rex and Rocky. I work as a pharmacist, and in my spare time I love to cook, eat, and travel (of course). When traveling, I like to be surprised, by new cultures, breathtaking sights, fascinating or quirky history, and exciting new flavours. The way I like to experience a destination most is to eat my way through it. For me, food is a wonderful combination of culture, history, and new dishes that represent the place I’m discovering. It can also make strong new memories, and every time you eat a certain dish from somewhere, you can remenisce about all the good times and interesting places you’ve been to.
My travel goal is to have visited all seven continents before I turn 35. Only Antarctica and Australia are left on the to-do list, and I would like to share my travel experiences reaching that goal here as a guest writer on the blog. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has made international travel a lot more difficult, so I have decided to see more of the Netherlands as well. I will look for what interesting places it has to offer, other than the big four (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague), so you can also expect some articles about that.
I am excited to join The Royal Tour Blog as a guest writer and I hope you will enjoy my articles about the Dutch cities and places and my future travels far away!