Meeting Miffy
Do you know who Miffy is? No? Kind of look familiar? Don’t worry, I didn’t know who Miffy was either. Now, Miffy is one of our best friends…haha… She’s even the star of the book “Miffy in the Netherlands” that we bought for the kids to teach them about different areas in the Netherlands.
The Miffy Museum (nijntje museum) is located in Utrecht. The museum is specifically made for children ages 1 to 4. Miffy is a little rabbit created by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. There are more than 30 books about Miffy, a TV show, a movie and lots of other items with Miffy’s picture on them. Miffy is an iconic figure among Dutch children and is popular in other areas of Europe as well. There is a unique traffic light in Utrecht with Miffy characters and at the beach in Scheveningen, the location signs along the beach were inspired by Miffy and Dick Bruna’s artistry.
We bought our tickets online a few days before we planned to visit and booked the 10:00 a.m. time slot. I’m not sure how often the time slots sell out, but I wanted to get the first one so we could spend a few hours at the museum and still get home in time to eat lunch and take naps. Another bonus to being one of the first people to arrive at the museum is we were able to get a parking spot right across the street from the museum in the small surface parking lot. We decided to drive to Utrecht because the museum is kind of far from the train station and it just seemed easier than trying to navigate through the streets of Utrecht on foot with the kids.
The only reason you want to visit this museum is if you have kids between the ages of 1 and 4. There is nothing that will interest older kids or adults without children. This is 100% a play area for young kids. The museum is split into a couple different floors with a few themed rooms on each floor. The first room was Miffy’s house. There was a little kitchen, a bedroom and a tiny house with a garden. The kids really liked playing in this room.
Another favorite for our kids, and every other kid at the museum, was the traffic area upstairs. There was a little road, a train, railroad gates, pedal cars and stoplights all set up to simulate a real traffic environment for the kids. The railroad gates were operated by hand so the kids could put them up/down when another child came through on the train so the cars could not pass. There was also a yellow school bus that Ben played on forever. We could not get him off the bus, so he made lots of Dutch friends as he rode back and forth. This room was so well loved by the children that is should have been about twice as big as it was.
Jack started to get a little bored with some areas of the museum (he was on the upper end of the age range that would be entertained by this place, Ben could have played all day), but then we discovered an art room and he was re-energized. He colored some pictures, glued some shapes together and painted with watercolors. Ben tried to join him, but ended up turning all the watercolors brown as he’s too young to understand the concept of rinsing your brush between colors.
We stayed at the museum for 2 hours which seemed to be just the right amount of time. Since our visit, the boys have loved pointing out Miffy any time they see her on signs or other items. Ben also got his very own Miffy sweatshirt, so now he really looks like a little blonde Dutch boy.
