Netherlands

Five places in Holland that you must see
Essential excursions in The Netherlands
This lens introduces you to five places you must see in Holland (or The Netherlands, as my country is officially known): Your trip to Holland is not complete without them. Your schedule of things to do in Holland should include Rembrandt's and Vermeer's masterpieces, a little bit of Dutch history, and of course tulips and windmills. The five excursions can easily be done on day trips from Amsterdam.

Bikes in The Netherlands, about Dutch Bikes
Yes, we really bike to school, work, grocery shopping etc.
There is no country in the world where biking is so normal as it is in The Netherlands - except China. This is a tribute to Dutch Bikes. Yes, we really do a lot of bicycling - and we've got the bikes to show for it. Image above © Katinka Hesselink [A reader told me the people of Denmark also do a lot of biking. I looked it up online, and they sure do. More about biking in Denmark. I'm not going to try and decide whether the Dutch or the Danish bike more - suffice to say that within Europe the...

Quiz: Holland (The Netherlands)
Hoe gaat het? Zullen we beginnen?
More new questions March 2011!. The Netherlands, commonly but erroneously also called Holland (esp. by English people) is a country in Western Europe, much of which has been reclaimed from the sea. This is the land of windmills, of dykes and polders, of dairy production and of bulbs (the floral variety, rather than the electrical variety!). The language is a little tricky to master, in that there are sounds that are unique to The Netherlands among European languages. They make wonderful be...

Korte Vlietpad - my favorite walk in Leiden
Giant squids were asked, as our final assignment of our summer school 2009, to make a lens about our favorite haunt this summer. Well, I've been living in my 'new' apartment for a year now, but it's only in the last few months that I've discovered that this patch of green next to a canal is the best place to go walking. I am, generally, more a biking girl, but the neighborhood doesn't have parks large enough to make that fun nearby. Instead this smaller park is there - it is big enough for ...

The Netherlands Headquarters
Holland - aka The Netherlands
For lenses about the Netherlands: that country that contains Amsterdam... Dutch people themselves call the country Nederland - and the closest English equivalent is 'The Netherlands' (which is a literal translation of the older way of referring to our collection of states: De Nederlanden). Holland was the biggest province (or state) in the Netherlands - and the most powerful one. For this reason it came to stand for the whole country - a bit like foreigners will refer to England, mean...

December in Holland
Dutch December holidays
In December, we celebrate three traditional holidays: Sinterklaas, Christmas, and new year's eve. I'll tell you how we spent these holidays here in Holland first. After that, it's your turn: Please share your family's December holiday traditions below in the guestbook.

Henk's Dutch lenses
A lensography
I'm Dutch, and many of my lenses are somehow related to Holland (a.k.a. the Netherlands): From Dutch genealogy lenses to Dutch recipes, and of course a travel lens with tulips and windmills. In this lensography I present an overview of my Dutch lenses.