Overview to the Netherlands: Travel Guide and Tourist Information
- Netherlands Information
- Events in Netherlands
- Things to do in Netherlands
- Where to stay in Netherlands
- Netherlands street map
With its reputation for tolerance, liberal values and generally having a good time, the Netherlands is definitely a backpacking sort of place. And sure enough, the seedy charms of Amsterdam – with its smoky coffeeshops, Red Light District and furiously paced nightlife – attract travelers like moths to a flame.
Spreading out from Amsterdam is the most visited area of the Randstad, a circuit of towns that includes The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. The Hague is effectively the world’s center of justice, whilst Rotterdam, the largest port in the world, is a thriving modern city with a buzz all of its own and Utrecht is both studenty and vibrant.
To the south of the country, Maastricht is one of a number of impressive little towns brimming with life and fine architecture. Up north, Groningen is yet another place with a large student population and a nightlife to match.
Within easy reach of the town of Arnhem, De Hoge Veluwe National Park is an expansive area of heath, scrubland and woods that's riddled with pathways ideal for walking and cycling. Slightly unusually, the park also has an excellent art gallery – the Kroller-Muller Museum – at its center.
Clichés aside, the Netherlands really is a country of strikingly iconic images. A flat land crisscrossed with canals, where cyclists peddle along green dykes against a backdrop of windmills and fields of tulips, it’s a landscape that inspired the painters Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Vermeer, some of whose works can be seen in the country’s many galleries.
Queen’s Day (Koninginnedag) represents the country at its very best; a crazy street party where, incredibly, anyone can legally sell anything for a day, it's both an outpouring of riotous national pride and a thoroughly civilized affair. Only the Dutch could do anything like it.
