Netherlands
Step into a cycle lane and you will be hit. Not maybe. Will
Population
18m people
Currency
Euro
Main Language
Dutch
best time to visit
April – May for tulips, June-August for weather
Climate
Mild maritime, wet year round, windy
Visa
Schengen area – 90 days visa free in any 180 day period for UK and most non-EU visitors
Country overview
The Netherlands is small, flat and organised to a degree that is either soothing or unnerving depending on your temperament. It also has a national relationship with the bicycle that visitors consistently underestimate. Cycle lanes are roads. They have right of way, they are full of people going faster than you think, and standing in one to take a photo is how holidays end.
Amsterdam absorbs most of the attention and increasingly resents it. The city has been actively trying to reduce a certain kind of tourism for years. It is still worth visiting for the canals, the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh, but Utrecht, Rotterdam, Haarlem and Delft are all within an hour by train and none of them are sick of you yet.
Dutch directness is the other adjustment. What reads as rudeness to a British ear is usually just efficiency with the padding removed. Nobody is annoyed with you. They have simply told you the actual answer rather than the polite one, and they expect the same back, which after a few days is genuinely refreshing.
Annual events and festivals
- Carnival (Feb) — the Catholic south, especially Maastricht and Den Bosch, does a proper three-day carnival the north largely ignores.
- Keukenhof (late Mar – mid May) — seven million bulbs in one garden. Peak tulip is usually mid April.
- King’s Day (27 Apr) — the whole country wears orange, drinks in the street and sells its junk on the pavement. The single best day to be in the Netherlands.
- Liberation Day (5 May) — festivals in every province marking the end of the German occupation.
- Rotterdam Summer Carnival (Jul) — a Caribbean street parade with serious numbers.
- Amsterdam Pride (Aug) — the canal parade, where the floats are actual boats. Unique and enormous.
- Lowlands (Aug) — the biggest music and arts festival in the country.
- Amsterdam Dance Event (Oct) — the largest electronic music conference and festival in the world.
- Sinterklaas (5 Dec) — the real gift-giving day. Bigger than Christmas for Dutch families.
- Amsterdam Light Festival (Dec-Jan) — light art along the canals, best seen from a boat.