Rick Steves - Rick Steves Amsterdam & the Netherlands

AMSTERDAM & THE NETHERLANDS

Rick Steves & Gene Openshaw

Travel is intensified livingmaximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. Its recess, and we need it.

I discovered a passion for European travel as a teen and have been sharing it ever sincethrough my tours, public television and radio shows, and travel guidebooks. Over the years, Ive taught thousands of travelers how to best enjoy Europes blockbuster sightsand experience Back Door discoveries that most tourists miss.

Written with my talented co-author, Gene Openshaw, this book offers you a balanced mix of the Netherlands lively cities and idyllic towns, from bustling Amsterdam to tranquil Delft. Its selective: Rather than listing dozens of cozy towns, we recommend only the best ones. And its in-depth: Our self-guided museum tours and city walks provide insight into the regions vibrant history and todays living, breathing culture.

We advocate traveling simply and smartly. Take advantage of our money- and time-saving tips on sightseeing, transportation, and more. Try local, characteristic alternatives to expensive hotels and restaurants. In many ways, spending more money only builds a thicker wall between you and what you traveled so far to see.

We visit the Netherlands to experience itto become temporary locals. Thoughtful travel engages us with the world, as we learn to appreciate other cultures and new ways to measure quality of life.

Judging by positive feedback from our readers, this book will help you enjoy a fun, affordable, and rewarding vacationwhether its your first trip or your tenth.

Have a goede vakantie! Happy travels!

Wherever you roam, youll find the Netherlands to be something of an eye-opener. Behind its placid exterior, its a complex mix of modern technology, honored traditions, farmed countryside, outrageous architecture, and no-nonsense, globally minded people.

Progressive Amsterdam is the tourist draw with the most historic sights and museums, but it has inviting neighborhoods as well, with leafy canals, chiming carillons, quaint shops, and friendly eateries. Beyond Amsterdam, youll discover the hidden charms of Haarlem, where a market bustles around its historic church. The Hague has Vermeer paintings in its top-notch museums, while peaceful Delft is a Vermeer painting come to life. Theres no end of delightful townsEdam, Alkmaar, Hoorn, and moreas well as open-air museums.

Holland is just a nickname for the Netherlands. North Holland and South Holland are the largest of the 12 provinces that make up the Netherlands. In Hollands 17th-century Golden Age, Dutch traders sailed the seas to find exotic goods, creating a global economy. Tiny Holland was a world powerpolitically, economically, and culturallywith more great artists per square mile than any other country.

Today, the country is Europes most densely populated and also one of its wealthiest and best organized. In 1944, the neighboring countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg became the nucleus of a united Europe when they joined to form the Benelux economic union.

Bikes and boats are popular modes of transportation for good reason in this small, flat, canal-crossed country.

The average income in the Netherlands is higher than in the United States. Though only 8 percent of the labor force is made up of farmers, 70 percent of the land is cultivated: If you venture outside of Amsterdam, youll travel through vast fields of barley, wheat, sugar beets, potatoes, and flowers.

Much of the flat Dutch landscape was reclaimed from the sea, producing several Dutch icons in the process: Windmills and canals drained the land. Wooden shoes (klompen) allowed farmers to walk across soggy low-lying fields known as polders. (The shoes also floatmaking them easy to find should they come off in high water.) Tulips and other flowers grew well in the sandy soil near dunes.

The Netherlands flat land also makes it a bikers dream. The Dutch, who average four bikes per family, have put small bike roads (with their own traffic lights) beside nearly every major highway. You can rent bikes at most train stations and drop them off at most others. And you can take bikes on trains (outside of rush hour) for less than 10 per day. But bikes can make things tricky for those on foot. You might expect the right-of-way pecking order to favor pedestrians, then bikes, then cars. Not so. In practice, you should assume its bikes first...then everyone else. Watch very carefully for bikes before crossing (or even stepping into) the street.

The word Nederland means lowland. The country occupies the delta near the mouth of three of Europes large rivers, including the Rhine. In medieval times, inhabitants built a system of earthen dikes to protect their land from flooding caused by tides and storm surges. The story of the little Dutch boy who saves the countryby sticking his finger in a leaking dikesummed up the countrys precarious situation. (Many Americans know this story from a popular 19th-century novel, but few Dutch people have ever heard of it.)

In 1953, severe floods breached the old dikes, killing 1,800 and requiring a major overhaul of the system. Todays 350 miles of dikes and levees are high-tech, with electronic systems to monitor water levels. Dutch experts traveled to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina to share their expertise with US officials after levee failure caused massive flooding. And after Hurricane Sandy, American hydrology experts began looking to the Netherlands for models of how to protect huge areas from flooding.

Much of the land of the Netherlands was reclaimed from the sea, rivers, and lakes, thanks to the countrys iconic windmills. After diking off large tracts of land below sea level, the Dutch used windmills to harness wind energy to lift the water up out of the enclosed area, divert it into canals, and drain the land. They cultivated hardy plants that removed salt from the soil, slowly turning marshy estuaries into fertile farmland. The windmills later served a second purpose for farmers by turning stone wheels to grind their grain.