Page 177 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - The Netherlands

WESTERN NE THERLANDS  175

NORTH

HOLLAND

Although North Holland’s landscape is mainly flat, it is by
no means featureless. Low-lying polders, with windmills
and grazing cows, give way to market gardens and
colourful bulb fields. Around Amsterdam the land is more
built-up, with lively towns and picturesque villages almost cheek by jowl.
North Holland has always been one canals; one connects Zaandam to Den
of the most important areas of the Helder in the north, while the other,
Netherlands economically, due to its the important North Sea Canal, gives
industry, fishing and commerce. The Amsterdam’s busy port access to the
Zuiderzee ports played a major part North Sea at IJmuiden. Land reclamation,
in the voyages of the Dutch East India at which the Dutch excel, has been
Company (see p52), and their merchants going on since the 14th century, and
became wealthy from the trade in exotic many historical island communities
imports. They built splendid houses and are now surrounded by dry land.
filled them with expensive furniture and Tourism is a major industry in North
fine art, much of which has found its way Holland, with Schiphol, the coun try’s
into the province’s leading museums. major airport, at its heart. The North Sea
This part of the country has learned coast has a string of delightful resorts and
to live with and profit from water. The sea-front hotels among the dunes, while
province is bordered by it on three sides, in the communities on the IJsselmeer
with the unpredictable North Sea to the such as Edam, famous for its cheese, and
west and the vast IJsselmeer (formerly picturesque Volendam, you can still find
the Zuiderzee) to the east. The flat land villagers wearing traditional costume
in between is bisected by two major and the famous Dutch wooden clogs.

Enkhuizen, a fine historical fishing town on the IJsselmeer
IJsselmeer Dam in the northern Netherlands

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