I moved to Germany in April of 2009. I traveled for my job and one of the first trips I took was to Belgium with an over-night, side trip to The Netherlands. While the trip was ostensibly to “Amsterdam“ we didn't actually enter the city, as our meetings were all at our airport office and, while Schipol is a quick train ride from the city center, we simply didn't have time to make said trip. However, it was this trip that took a country that had always been way down on my list of places to visit and put it near the top.
This blog entry won't be nearly as long as the one about Amsterdam. The reason for this is the fact that my husband and my weekend trips were never long enough to get out of Amsterdam's city center, which we have never regretted because of how much there is to explore in the city. Nonetheless, we are truly planning on spending some time in other parts of the Netherlands and will report back as soon as possible.
The Netherlands, despite my limited experience with any part of the country outside of Amsterdam, is unique and it is beautiful. I grew up in the hilly half of Ohio (Eastern) but I have had my fair share of road trips through flat, Western Ohio into even flatter Indiana and Illinois. The most memorable of these was an eight hour drive to a wedding. I had just finished my finals and I was exhausted and since this drive goes through farmland and nothing else, I was slapping myself, driving with the windows down, and listening to the radio at full blast by the time I got to Indianapolis to stay awake. With one exception, I drove to my audits in The Netherlands. The country is, if possible, even flatter than Indiana and Illinois but, unlike those two states, the drive through it is not boring. First of all, while one passes a great deal of farmland, it manages to be greener, somehow, and instead of fences, the borders of the fields are marked off by canals. They even use these to “fence in“ cows. Second, the farms themselves are generally much smaller than what I am used to in the States, which makes for a more varied landscape. Third, while I haven't seen any of the quaint windmills one associates with The Netherlands while driving along the highway (there are thousands of the modern, industrial ones), one frequently comes across them when one gets off of the highway, which we had to do on one of our trips because of a major accident. Fourth, when one drives along the country roads, one passes countless bicyclists, which makes it all so much more bucolic. A colleague and I, having finished work early one day, drove to Volendam, which is a small town on the coast. We passed a windmill, lots of farmland, and bicyclists. The town itself is quaint and it has the added visual impact of showing just how low The Netherlands is because you have to walk uphill in order to reach the sea (“Nether“ in Dutch and “Nieder“ in German mean “low“ so the country is actually, “the lowlands“).
Neither of us particularly enjoy eating at touristy places because the quality of the food is usually mediocre so we went for a drive to see what we could find for dinner. Serendipitously, our path led us to Edam. Yes, it is the Edam of the cheese and such cheese it is! Gouda, by the way, comes from the town of Gouda. In fact, this tradition of naming cheese after it's original town or province is not unique to The Netherlands (think Parmigiano Reggiano), but I digress. Edam was small, quaint, and filled with canals so we found a parking spot and wandered until we came across The Dam Hotel, which has an excellent restaurant called “L'Auberge“. The food was my first real glimpse into what my husband and I were to later discover - a resurgent and excellent culinary scene. You will have to read about Amsterdam to learn about that though.
Traveling to the Netherlands
This isn't a travel blog but, as I would personally find it annoying to read about a great country without also receiving a bit of travel advice, I will do my best to help my readers out.
The country of the Netherlands is easy to get to, as it features one of the largest airports in Europe, Schiphol. The airport is just outside of Amsterdam and the train into the city takes a short 25 minutes and empties its passengers right in the center of the city so, if you end up with a long layover here, you can do some sightseeing instead of spending your precious vacation hours stuck at the airport. The Netherlands is a small country - approximately twice the size of New Jersey - with excellent train connections so anyone wanting to visit the country and not just Amsterdam will find it quite easy to do so. If your trip includes visits to other countries either before or after your tour of the Netherlands, you will find that you can be in Cologne, Germany in just over 3 hours from Amsterdam Centraal (on Germany's ICE), and Brussels, Belgium in 2 hours and Paris, France in 3.25 hours respectively if you take the Thalys (France's high-speed train. The tickets are usually quite inexpensive too, if you order them well in advance). One can usually find low-cost carriers flying in and out of Schiphol too, if traveling to a more distant local. momondo.com is a good site for finding these fares as, unlike Kayak, it includes at least the majority of Europe's low-cost carriers.
Americans can drive in many European countries with an American driver's license but the Netherlands offers a wonderful opportunity to slow down, take in more scenery, and get a good workout as it is a very bikeable country.
The Netherlands is also, in my opinion, a great country to go with kids. While Amsterdam is, unfortunately, known for its “coffee shops“ and red light district, having been there numerous times, I can safely say that these make up less than 10% of the city and that is being generous. I suspect it is closer to 5%. The Dutch are very welcoming to children, the food is more likely to be something picky kids would eat (just try to get a picky child to eat most of the food served in France!), and bikes come with various modes of child-carrying from baskets (they look a bit like a wheel barrow in shape and size) in the front to wheeled, covered trailers in the back and, because everyone here bikes, people tend to be much more careful when they drive. The country has beaches, a great deal of green space, and windmills and tulip fields - all of the things I loved and/or dreamed about when I was a child.
Oh, and before I end this blog entry, I should also mention that the Netherlands, as well as Germany and some other countries in Europe, has many reasonably comfortable, inexpensive hotels (I say reasonably comfortable because I like a softer mattress and, to my great woe and innumerable backaches, I found that the Germans and the Dutch prefer very firm mattresses). This is important when your budget isn't huge and you are converting from dollars to Euros. You will find cheap lodging a bit difficult in Amsterdam but it is possible.
How much do the Dutch like to bike? Take a look at the bike-park or garage (as opposed to a parking garage or car park, depending on whether one is American or British) just outside Amsterdam Centraal station.