We were looking for a place to stay in or near Amsterdam. We also wanted to visit The Hague and Rotterdam. We ended up finding the perfect place in Gouda! We didn’t know anything about Gouda except that it had a cheese market with, of course, Gouda cheese.
The first thing we saw as we walked through town was the town hall. It is this amazing Gothic building and apparently a lot of couples get married here. There is a carillon (klokkenspel) on the side and it plays two minutes after the hour and half hour.
The nice thing about Gouda – it feels like Amsterdam with all of the canals and bridges. But it is much smaller and not crowded at all. It has a small town feel with lots of beauty! Do you notice anything about these parking spots? The driver opens their door right against the canal! You have to be careful when parking AND when getting out of your car!
Here is another canal view at night. This canal has much more of a drop:
And of course there are windmills everywhere. In the large farmlands, there are tons of new modern white windmills. But sprinkled around town and on some farms you will see the old traditional Dutch windmills. Could you imagine living in this house?
This is the backside of the same windmill house:
We always like to stop in bookstores in other countries. Our favorite is reading the children’s books in a foreign language!
A beautiful bike in front of a meat shop:
Chocolate sprinkles for breakfast? Yes! Here in Holland, you will see chocolate sprinkles in the grocery store. LOTS and LOTS of chocolate sprinkles. They are for hagelslag – which is buttered bread with chocolate sprinkles on top. The Dutch eat this for breakfast.
