The Netherlands Experience

There's more to life than just Amsterdam

Advantages: Cheap to get to, friendly people, lovely historic old towns
Disadvantages: A local pathological obsession with bread

INTRODUCTION It was 14 years ago that I boarded a plane to Amsterdam for a weekend trip which would be the first time I'd been on a plane since I was 3. Having recently landed a job where I was asked if I minded international travel, I thought I'd better take a crash course in foreign travel, and accompanied by my sister here I was on my way. Having been half scared to death by the noise and momentum of the jet engines on take off, and equally ...
...I'd arrived, it was a crash course indeed. And I hadn't even been to the red light district yet. Fast forward to the present day, and about half my working life has been spent abroad in one way or another, so they weren't joking about the travel. And here I find myself again in the Netherlands, but this time way off the beaten track, to the South in a small town called Breda. These days I find myself idly amused by plane take offs and equally unfazed ...

larsbaby 04.02.2008 · Read full review
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Review of General: Netherlands

Red light districts disclosed

Advantages: Easy sex
Disadvantages: Seedy

Red light districts, and the one in Amsterdam is probably the most famous in Europe, have always been a world full of mistery. The Netherlands' sensible social outlook extends to prostitution, which is ostensibly well-regulated. Amsterdam's red-light area is, as I wrote earlier, definitively the most (in)famous, but all the cities have their own crawls. Prostitutes display themselves in windowed booths, and when there is custom, the curtain is drawn ...
...happy hooker, however, there's an unhappy one, perhaps a young Eastern European without the right papers, sucked into a vicious circle of high hopes, drug addiction and extortion. The saddest thing, in fact, is the fact that the red light district is also the centre of drug traffickers activity. ...

FRADUC 19.05.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Red light districts (Netherlands)

Chouchinciao Tours Ltd

Advantages: Relaxing, a variety of things to see and do
Disadvantages: No great wow factor

...devised this tour around the Markermeer in an attempt to find some cooler air and see a bit of non-urban Holland. Both aims were successfully met, so here is a bespoke, researched, guided tour, specially devised for newly arrived hot northern European summers. It is a full day trip of about 120 miles and obviously you can't stop to look at everything in every town. This is our particular selection, determined mainly by the prevailing heatwave. A ...
...Now you're seeing the Markermeer for the first time. This is the southern part of the old Zuiderzee (♫ How would you like to be … Down by the Zuiderzee ♫ - you can have a sing-a-long on the way home) now divided off from the North Sea by two dykes to create two freshwater lakes, the northerly one, the Ijsselmeer and this southerly one the Markermeer. The Dutch have of course been fighting for centuries to keep the water IN the sea and ...

Chouchinciao 31.07.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Markermeer and surroundings

SEA of SAND

Advantages: Well laid-out holiday resort, great beach, close to Amsterdam
Disadvantages: Freezing in January!

...Glad you asked. Zandvoort is a beach resort on the North Sea coast in the province of Noord-Holland. It's about 20km north of Amsterdam and about 5km east of Haarlem. It's not a huge place, in fact the original settlement is not much more than a village. However, over the years it has spread out a little with the arrival of large hotels, holiday apartment blocks and camp-sites so that these days, it's quite a sprawl. Obviously, the main attraction ...
...Culture? Well, there's the Zandvoort Museum which concerns itself with the local history. There's also the cutely-named Mu-ZEE-UM, which has displays detailing all the flotsam and jetsam that gets washed ashore. I liked the sound of that one, but my philistine of a son wasn't interested, and as mrs P wasn't there to tell me what to do, he unselfishly took over the mantle. Add to these a multitude of sports facilities, including golf course, cycle ...

proxam 13.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Zandvoort

UNDER VALKENBURG

Advantages: Historic town with great shopping
Disadvantages: It can be crowded

...is only 6km wide. VALKENBURG is only a 20-minute drive from Aachen and a further 10 minutes will take you, by way of Maastricht, into Belgium. Tourist information: http://www.vvvzuidlimburg.nl/index2en.asp Geography lesson over, we'll crack on with the review. South Limburg has a lovely landscape, quite different to what most people would associate with the Netherlands, with features such as the Vaalserberg, the highest point in the Netherlands ...
...give it its Sunday name, VALKENBURG AAN DE GEUL, is literally riddled with countless marlstone caves. For this reason, along with its small-scale 'mountainous' landscape, the nature reserves of Meinweg, De Groote Peel and De Hamert, the casino and the thermal baths make this the oldest tourist centre in the Netherlands. We arrived there quite early in the morning and were immediately surprised by how busy the town was. However, a quick coffee for ...

proxam 28.11.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Valkenburg