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!

Groningen, Netherlands

Dutch Carnaval

Marvelous Maastricht, Netherlands

Amazing Antwerp, Belgium

Kota Kinabalu

The Good Times and Hard Times Visiting Cambodia

The Enchanting Cook Islands

Surprising Sydney