Holland's most iconic places
Someone loves it, someone hates it, but it is undeniable that for tireless travellers, Spring marks the opening of the doors of the city: you can go beyond the urban destinations and explore bucolic and rural areas, the days become longer and milder, offering the opportunity to stay longer in the open air, the blossoming of fields and cherry trees offers new and colourful photographic glimpses after the white winter paleness.
Among the destinations that are best enjoyed in Spring is certainly Holland, the most famous region of the Netherlands, where among flowers, bike tours and classic urban destinations, you will surely find the place that meet your taste, for a perfect spring trip.
TULIP FIELDS
The colourful perspective escapes furrowed by passageways create very impressive views. Various types of bulb plants are cultivated, such as tulips and irises, which with their bright nuances create rainbow stripes that colour the flat landscape throughout the spring.
The most picturesque tulip fields in Holland are located in Lisse, a town just 40 km from Amsterdam, the perfect day trip out of town. Lisse is the home of the famous Keukenhof botanical garden, where you will find magnificent flowerbeds in a bucolic park.
We preferred to observe the tulips in their natural habitat, i.e. the tidy and geometric expanses of cultivated fields that around the town of Lisse, from mid-April, extend as far as the eye can see, spaced out with groves, canals and small villages.
A good place to observe them are the roads that run alongside the canals in the area East of the village, along Lisserweg for example.
CANALS AND BRICK HOUSES
The canals built for water regimentation run through the whole Dutch plain, but those flanked by beautiful 17th century brick houses are certainly the most beautiful. Amsterdam's picturesque canals need no introduction. The beautiful architecture with the narrow, slender brick houses that struggle to stand up straight draws attention at every step. The richly decorated and heterogeneously shaped gables, the huge leaded windows, the curved niches. Some overlook the streets flanking the canals, others dive directly into the water creating beautiful reflections. Others, with the same picturesque architecture, rise in the internal alleys of the blocks, and each one has a distinctive though homogeneous character.
A curiosity: a miniature of some Amsterdam houses has been inserted in the narrow gap between the walls of two buildings. Here, in fact, the house numbers have risen from 54 to 70, because over the decades some buildings have been merged in a single house or the numbered courtyards accessible from the street, have been closed. So an advertising agency thought to put the missing buildings exactly where they should be. Try looking for them as you walk through the alleys. A hint? They're in Jordaan district.
WINDMILLS
Not far from Rotterdam is the cradle of 19 windmills dating back to the 18th century. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, this place is a picturesque set of canals originally built to control flooding in the plains near Dordrecht. Made of wood and brick, conical or faceted, these perfectly preserved mills, and some still in working order, are the symbol of Holland and you won't find anywhere else to see such a high concentration.
The surrounding landscape is formed by paths through green fields furrowed by water channels, a perfect place for a walk or a bike ride.
