North Holland

Alkmaar is the cheese city of the Netherlands: Cheese has been traded here since 1622, and from April to September, guild cheese carriers carry the yellow wheels across the market square on Friday mornings. The city is located approximately 50 kilometers northwest of Amsterdam between the North Sea and the IJsselmeer.The old town, with its canals, the 14th-century Weigh House, and the Late Gothic Laurenskerk, is compact. Alkmaar is proud of October 8, 1573, when the Spanish besiegers surrendered during the Eighty Years' War – a day still celebrated annually. The city has a population of around 112,000.

The Zaanse Schans is a living open-air museum on the River Zaan north of Amsterdam: green wooden houses, craft workshops, and a series of working windmills show what the oldest industrial area of the Netherlands once looked like. With around 1.9 million visitors annually, it is one of the most visited destinations in the country.Between 1961 and 1974, many historic buildings from the Zaanstreek were moved here and reconstructed. On display are a paint mill, sawmills and oil mills, a clog workshop, a cheese factory, and the Zaans Museum covering the region's industrial history.

Volendam is a former fishing village on the IJsselmeer north of Amsterdam, known for its harbor with old fishing boats and for the traditional costume with its high, pointed bonnet. Visitors have been coming here for this reason since about 1875.The village originated in 1357 when the citizens of the neighboring town of Edam built a new harbor and dammed up the old one. It belongs to the municipality of Edam-Volendam, has around 22,700 inhabitants, and, unlike its surroundings, remained Catholic during the Reformation. The pop music that originated here is also named after the Dutch word for eel, the "Palingsound."

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands and by far its most visited destination: a city of 165 canals and almost 1,300 bridges, whose 17th-century canal ring has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2010. Here, Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" hangs in the Rijksmuseum, along with the world's most famous Van Gogh collection, and here stands the Anne Frank House.The city originated in the 13th century on a dam in the Amstel and is located on the IJ, a former sea inlet. With approximately 936,000 inhabitants, it is the country's largest city; however, the government and parliament are situated in The Hague, about 60 kilometers away.

Haarlem is the capital of the province of Noord-Holland and is located just 19 kilometers west of Amsterdam – a canal city with a Gothic main church on the Grote Markt, picturesque 17th and 18th-century residential courtyards, and the oldest museum in the Netherlands. Many visitors combine it with a day trip from Amsterdam or with the beach, as the North Sea coast is only about seven kilometers away.The city on the Spaarne River has a population of around 169,000. In 1839, the first train in the Netherlands departed from here for Amsterdam; today's station building from 1908 is the country's only Art Nouveau train station.