Touring the Netherlands: The Golden Oldies

We've hit peak tourist season in the Netherlands (late spring is an excellent time to travel here), and Jeff and I are just racking up the Dutch Golden Oldies. Keeping in mind that I live a G-rated life, what do you think of when I say "Holland"? Yup, we've pretty much done it.

Exhibit 1: Tulips

For about three weeks at the end of April, the fields from Leiden to Amsterdam were strips of bright color, so fragrant you could smell them through train windows (especially the hyacinths). Along the roadsides, impotent field owners' signs pleaded unsuccessfully with the hordes of tourists, "PLEASE Do Not Walk in the Flower Beds."

Sixty years ago, the mayor of a small town and the major bulb exporters in the region had the brilliant idea of distilling the beauty of the bulb fields into a major garden exposition: draw tourists, market products, spread a little flower love. Thus the Keukenhof was born.

We're talking 80 acres of manicured gardens hand-planted with 7 million bulbs (mostly tulips, but also hyacinths, daffodils, crocuses, and their less famous cousins) - plus a petting zoo, a lake, countless water features, several large exhibition halls full of flower demonstrations, and a windmill (though I think it was a replica).

This year's theme: "Germany, Land of Poets and Philosophers." Because when I think tulips, I think Nietzsche. (Which I thought was very funny until we entered the park and almost immediately stumbled across the billboard celebrating Nietzsche. This probably means there's a tulip named after him.) Frankly, I'm not sure why they need a "theme", other than "flowers".

And the flowers really are pretty. According to the park's website, "It is the most photographed place in the world." (Not sure how you verify that one...) It's like you want to be cynical about it, but you just can't be.

There was one dark spot on our first visit to the Keukenhof, however: we didn't rent bikes to cruise among the bulb fields. We have a suspicion that this would be extraordinary. Guess it's always good to leave something for "next time"? (For an idea of what the bulb fields look like, check out this NYT magazine spread. For how to avoid the NYT's 20 article per month limit, see Jeff's post.)

Bottom line: Best reached by car, the Keukenhof is a family-friendly activity that warrants a half day and could justify a full day. Tickets for the gardens run €15, parking €6, and bike rentals are less than €5 for several hours. Pack a picnic - the gardens include some nicely situated tables and benches (and the on-site restaurants are unsurprisingly expensive). It can also get very crowded, so go early in the day or, better yet, in the middle of the week. Still, expect hordes of tour buses at all times.

Exhibit 2: Windmills

Of course the Netherlands would have a World Heritage site based on windmills. The 19 windmills of the Kinderdijk, lined up neatly like sentinels, are of the water-drainage type - the windmills the Dutch used to "reclaim" land from the sea. For hundreds of years, these sturdy windmills pumped water up from the surrounding low-lying land and dumped it back into the ocean. And behold, farms were born!

So I'm not an engineer - but the precise mechanics of this are surprisingly difficult to grasp (or else they need to hire new people to write their English explanations). Whatever - as I like to say, it's magic. Clearly, then, I'm not going around Holland visiting windmills for their mechanical beauty. Do I still get something out of it?

Definitely. The Kinderkdijk is in a surprisingly rural area (for being so close to Rotterdam, a massively large city), and one could easily let an afternoon slip away biking or walking alongside reeds and canals (and windmills), or riding the gentle canal barge down the row of windmills and back. Perhaps it's not the most exciting or spectacular of grand European sites, but it is peaceful and oddly beautiful, in a stark and rustic sort of way.

Bottom Line: The Kinderdijk is also family-friendly and is definitely best reached by car. The site is free, though they may charge €5 if you want to park next to the entrance. Bikes can be rented for €2 or so.

You can go into one of the mills for €6 - or you can spend half as much to tour the De Valk mill in Leiden (conveniently located close to the train station). Granted, the De Valk was a food-grinding mill, not a water-pumping mill, but that doesn't detract from the inner-child fun of climbing up 5 or 6 stories of ladder-like stairs, through old living quarters and past the mill mechanics (including the massive mill stone). Plus it had an introductory video that nearly succeeded in making me understand how the various Dutch windmills work.

Exhibit 3: Cheese

This was, pun intended, the cheesiest stop on our Dutch Golden Oldies tour. I am incredulous that the Alkmaar cheese market has any real purpose today other than to amuse tour buses full of tourists.

There is some legitimating history behind it. Alkmaar had special privileges back in the day to weigh and tax cheese, so its cheese market was the largest in the region. Nowadays, on Friday mornings during the tourist season, they still line up wheels of yellow and orange cheese in front of the old weigh house, and a handful of men in white lab coats "negotiate" to buy thousands of kilos worth of cheese from a couple "farmers". The very small number of people actually involved in the buying and selling, and the fact that this all happens between 10 am and noon (way after most professional food markets have already closed up for the day), only bolsters my suspicion that no real business is being done here.

But it's mildly entertaining all the same: the lab coat men drill out samples of cheese to taste (which they sometimes generously share with the crowd) and then engage in some dramatic frowning, rubbing of the chin, and gesticulation. My favorite part was the actual negotiation: as they talk numbers, the "farmer" and the lab coat man start giving each other a series of low fives, like slow but rhythmic clapping. As soon as one of them makes an offer the other can accept, the latter catches the hand of the former in a firm handshake. I love this, as a lawyer, because their system means there's no gap between offer and acceptance.

Then the campiness starts up again: Men with wooden platforms slung between them run up to load the wheels of cheese before running back to the giant scale at the weigh house. (The handshake only settles the price per kilo.) Then they run the wheels off around the corner, where the modern trailer trucks are waiting to be loaded for the warehouse. My cynicism was further spurred when, within 15 minutes of the market's opening bell, these ancient "guilds" of cheese runners were already letting onlookers take a try at hauling cheese. Gotta maximize the photo ops.

Bottom line: Alkmaar is just north of Amsterdam and easily reached by train. The market is a medium-length walk from the station; viewing is free but uncomfortably crowded. The town itself is (yet another) cute Dutch town, but can be packed on cheese market mornings. In my book, this one was not worth the detour - unless, maybe, you have a kid aged 8-12. Who loves cheese (in all senses of the word).

Exhibit 4: Bicycles and Van Gogh

I hope you don't think you can just go to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and say you've "done" Vincent. Oh no, not so fast: there's another museum in the Netherlands with nearly as many paintings by Van Gogh - as well as a number of other super-impressive impressionist and modern paintings (see a sample here). Plus it comes with a free bike ride.

The catch is that the Kroller-Muller Museum is in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in the country's east. We actually managed to get there using public transportation, but it was no easy feat. Once there, however, we were able to flit around the giant park using the park's plentiful free white bicycles (the "witte fiets"). How charmingly Dutch is that?

On a warm spring day, the forests smelled like sun-baked pines and alternated with the odd landscape of inland sand dunes. I could have spent all day just biking around the park - the place is huge (by Dutch standards) - but there was art to be seen.

Literally, a sculpture garden.

What started as a private collection of wealthy industrialists from the turn of the last century is now a national treasure, set amidst an extensive sculpture garden. One can also tour the wealthy industrialists' estate on the edge of the park, but the visiting hours are pretty limited (a cause of mild disappointment - but like I said before, I guess it's always good to leave something for "next time"?)

Still, my favorite part was probably the free white bikes (what can I say, I have a very vocal inner child).

Bottom line: Trust me, rent a car. But then give yourself a full day to bike around the park and enjoy all its many amenities. Park entrance with museum ticket: €16 (and not covered by the museumkaart). Parking at the gates of the park: €6. Bike map of the park: €2.50. Bikes: free and plentiful. Food: overpriced, so bring a picnic. Comparison to Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum: exponentially less crowded, and equivalently more enjoyable.

Exhibit 5: Canals

Every Dutch town has them, but (after Amsterdam) Utrecht perhaps does them best. This is because Utrecht's main canal has quays, a lower level of terraces directly alongside the water, for a more intimate and Parisian-style canal experience. (See Lyza's photos here and here.)

Utrecht is a pretty university town right in the middle of the country - which means chances are good, if you're touring Holland, that you will be switching trains there at some point. We have several times ourselves, and on our most recent transiting, we paused to walk five minutes to the Oude Gracht, found an old brew house, and lounged next to the canal for a couple hours, nursing beers and bitterballen and watching paddleboats go by. Very civilized.

So what have I left off the list? Delftware, genever, wooden clogs? I'm not sure how one can tour "wooden clogs", but there is a genever museum. And it's covered by the museumkaart.

Stay tuned.