The countryside around Groningen rewards a slow afternoon. Within an hour by car or bike you can see mound villages, Romanesque churches, and the long flat expanse of the Wadden coast.
Bourtange is a perfectly restored star-shaped fortress town near the German border, an hour southeast. Uithuizen has the 14th-century Menkemaborg, a fairy-tale moated manor open as a museum. Pieterburen is the home of a seal sanctuary on the Wadden coast — and the starting point for guided walks across the mudflats at low tide, a uniquely Dutch experience. To the northwest, Lauwersoog is the ferry port to Schiermonnikoog, the smallest and quietest of the Wadden islands.