Pictures of the Netherlands

[♥ Lily ♥]

Handelingenkamer - De Tweede Kamer, The Hague


Rijksmuseum Research Library

[The Lawspeaker]

Enkele foto's van de Utrechtse Heuvelrug:

[Dandelion]

I have officially visited all of the Dutch provinces by going to Groningen that one rainy weekend end of July. It's one milestone which more Belgians should make, in my opinion. Now for the more indepth visits after the reaching the breadth.

[Westbrook]

Been using this as my wallpaper for a while. Somewhere in NL.

[The Lawspeaker]

Klik 5:26 voor het begin van de film! Ivo Niehe vertelt het verhaal van Nederland. Dit is de allereerste HD film over Nederland en toont de belangrijkste en mooiste plekken van het land. De stabiliteit van de beelden is verbluffend en de opnamen die over een periode van 8 maanden werden gemaakt, zijn in de beste lichtomstandigheden gefilmd. De kijker wordt door Wim Robberechts meegenomen op een vlucht doorheen de tijd. Volledig gefilmd vanuit helikopters met behulp van de nieuwste cameratechnieken en opnameapparatuur. Cineast Wim Robberechts neemt u mee naar : het Nederlandse oerlandschap, steden en kastelen, opvallende architectuur en stiltegebieden, dorpen en deltawerken. Ivo Niehe vertelt het verhaal van de prehistorie, via de Gouden Eeuw en de Tweede Wereldoorlog naar het heden. Over het Nederlandse bedrijfsleven, de landbouw, recreatie, natuurparken, de monarchie. John Boyle sprak de Engelse tekst in voor de dvd. Luchtopnames werden o.a. gemaakt boven : Afsluitdijk, Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Arnhem, Delft, Den Haag, Dordrecht, Haarlem, Hulst, Europoort, Efteling Kaatsheuvel, Groningen, Hoge Veluwe, Kamp Westerbork, Loosdrechtse Plassen, Maastricht, Militair ereveld Margraten, Rotterdam, Sittard, Palies Het Loo, Paleis Soestdijk, Schiphol Airport, Slot Loevestein, Stormvloedkering Oosterschelde, Utrecht, Waddeneilanden, Zutphen Met o.a.: De Nederlandse landschappen, waterwegen, architectuur, zijn bewoners en niemand minder dan Ivo Niehe als verteller in de hoofdrollen.

[The Lawspeaker]

[The Lawspeaker]

Around the Biesbosch:

[The Lawspeaker]

Amersfoort:

[The Lawspeaker]

One of the great things about visiting Rotterdam in the Netherlands is the vast pedestrian zone in the center. There are several major streets that function like a big outdoor shopping mall that you would love to explore, along with some quaint side lanes that will entice you to have a look. And now we're going to enjoy a detailed visit to the vibrant center of downtown Rotterdam, especially the Lijnbaan, the most famous of all the pedestrian malls. The map shows the city center and our routing, including several side malls that branch off from the main street. Lijnbaan was the first time in Europe that an automobile street was converted to exclusive use by pedestrians, making it Europe's first modern pedestrian shopping street. It opened in 1953 after the devastation of World War II. By now this pedestrian concept has been copied by nearly every city and town in Europe and in many places throughout the world. The stores are integrated so well with the street that it functions almost more like a standard shopping mall than a pedestrian lane, enjoying the advantages of both styles. You'll want to get off the main lane now and then for added shops and cafés. One of the side malls branching off here is Stadhuisplein facing the old City Hall, which we're going to visit later in the program -- a wonderful outdoor plaza with lots of dining facilities out on the terrace, very popular spot. Shopping malls did not even exist yet in 1953, so this was really some visionary planning. The famous American shopping mall developer Victor Gruen visited here back in 1953 and was disappointed that this had opened already before his own first shopping mall ever opened. Extending across from Stadhuisplein is another one-block-long mall, Korte Lijnbaan with more famous shops and places to eat. It's worth a little stroll to enjoy both of these side malls. Continuing on a few blocks further south on Lijnbaan, we get to another really lovely side mall called Beurstraverse. First crossing a rather busy intersection with lots of pedestrians and trams. There are still no cars allowed down here, but you've got these trams on steel rail at street level going by. It's a safe mix with the alert pedestrians. From here we can look down into this lovely shopping mall called Beurstraverse. It's really something quite different. We have a split-level street scene with shops up above and shops down below, with some benches and tables out in the plaza. It's a brilliant design because this encourages people to shop on two levels instead of just one, which is often a challenge on a normal shopping street. People just stay on the one main level on the shopping street. Of course in a shopping mall it's always multilevel and you've got escalators and nice stairways, and that's what we find here. It's another one of these hybrids between shopping mall and a retail pedestrian street. There is a charming curve to the architecture of the plaza which gives it cozy and comfortable feeling. The nickname for this places the Koopgoot, that means 'shopping gutter', and from that lower level you can walk right into the metro station. Looking down from street level for a final view of that lower mall, a lovely place to visit. Often when you're walking in the streets of the Netherlands you'll come upon a big calliope playing some pipe music. The street continues as Hoogstraat heading over to the Markthal that we've shown you in another episode. Leaving the shopping malls now, walking a few blocks south to one of the most popular streets in the city, Witte de Withstraat. Witte de Withstraat is one of those perfect urban streets. It's got everything. There are sidewalk restaurants, ethnic cuisines, cafés, bars, music clubs at night, art galleries, shops, wide sidewalks for pedestrians, trees providing shade. You can see why it's one of the most popular places for the locals to hang out. The atmosphere here is more relaxed and slightly Bohemian compared to the shopping malls that we've just seen earlier, and yet it's a family-friendly place, unlike during the 1970s when it was noted for seedy bars and illegal gambling. Now it's a bit of urban heaven. Right around it is a residential neighborhood that also includes some small hotels and vacation rentals. Now we're walking a few blocks back up north to the City Hall, the Stadhuis. Behind me is the City Hall. It's one of the few buildings that survived the bombing of World War II. Called Stadhuis, it's a grand structure that was built between 1914 and 1920 in somewhat of a Renaissance style, located on a major boulevard, the Coolsingel, and still functions today is the seat of government with the mayor's office and the Council Chambers. The building is open with free admission to the public areas on the ground floor, where you will find some lovely surprises. So step inside. It's a beautiful building with an amazing lobby.

Rotterdam, outdoor market, Cube Houses and Old Harbor. Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, has the nation's largest outdoor market and next to it are the Cube Houses, unusual apartments in the shape of cubes standing on a point, tilted over by 45 degrees, very curious. Next to that is the Old Harbor, Oude Haven, a popular gathering place with terrace restaurants along the shore of a harbor first built in the 14th century. The outdoor market a popular shopping place for locals as well, who pick up a lot of their fresh produce here, this and you can buy lunch at a price that's going to be lower than your typical restaurant. Because it gets so crowded it makes a great place for people-watching, with customers of all ages and national origin in this cosmopolitan city. Open from 9 to 5 Tuesdays and Saturdays. If you want to avoid the crowd get here early or come at the end of the afternoon. It will be worthwhile no matter when you can make it. Next to it alongside the Markthal is a very popular outdoor public park, especially when you're here on a Saturday and families can gather together, workers have the day off, and it's just a holiday atmosphere, with the medieval Church of St. Lawrence in the background. In the other direction, the white building is the Rotterdam Central Library, one of the city's best architectural curiosities. A six-story cascading façade with industrial design and angular yellow tubes makes it one of the most controversial buildings in the city. It contains half a million books in open stacks and one of the biggest record libraries in Europe. It's a multipurpose structure with a theater, a bookstore, there's Internet terraces on the first and top floors, and lecture halls and there's a café that sometimes has live music. Adjacent, the Blaak Tower design by Piet Blom, who also designed the Cube Houses next door, which is where we're going next. These cubes are actually apartments that people live in. Each is tipped up on a point, tilted at a crazy angle of about 45°. Inside, the floors are horizontal and yet the walls are all at an angle. It's efficient, using very little ground area while creating living space up above in a striking design. From Google Earth we can see how it's located on a bridge straddling eight lanes of a busy highway, another aspect of how it's efficiently using space that might have been otherwise unoccupied. It also serves as a pedestrian bridge to help you get across the road, and yes it's open free to the public. You're welcome to come on in, walk through, have a look around. There are some exhibits in one of the houses, you can pay a few euros if you want to go inside, but otherwise it's splendid from the outside. Or you could rent a room. There are some vacation rentals, a little hotel operation and a youth hostel, and a few shops, along with the condominiums of the permanent residence, some of whom have lived here since it first opened 30 years ago. Constructed out of wood, the architect Piet Blom envisioned each unit as a tree and altogether functioning like a forest. There are 40 apartments here, each with about 1000 ft.² of floor area, but only 1/4 of that space is actually usable because of all the sharp angles of the walls, and it's generally squeezed up into three floors with narrow staircases connecting them. That's the price one pays for living inside a most unusual work of art. It's in a great location between those markets and the Old Harbor, which is a picturesque part of Rotterdam that harkens back to the old days, unlike most of this modern city. From the cubes you can walk right down a gentle ramp that will lead you to this lovely restaurant terrace area right along the water's edge. You can see what a popular place this is for eating and drinking, easy to reach from the cubes, but curiously from the street, there's only a small sign. You might even miss the entrance. You have to know where you're going to get down here to the water. The harbor is bordered by buildings with the restaurants and terraces so there is no expansive view from the street, but there are some openings and you'll find it. Then you can walk along a nice promenade on the edge of the harbor. Walk around to the other side and get some great views looking back at the cubes and the terrace restaurants. This neighborhood is one of the most vibrant and popular places to be for eating, drinking, and to meet up with your friends and make some new ones, a fine example of urban planning and development. Recreational boating is always popular in the Netherlands and there are some commercial tours of the harbor on larger boats that we will show you in a different video. We upload a new movie every week so please subscribe to our channel and click that little alarm bell so you will be notified and if you enjoyed the movie, how about thumbs up and we always welcome comments down below

In Rotterdam in the Netherlands there is one especially strange building looking like something out of a futuristic science fiction movie but it's a food market also with many restaurants and bars set in a building like you have never seen before. It's one of the world's most unusual food markets. At the same time it's a condominium with 228 apartments. From the outside the building only looks a little bit unusual with that curved roof and as you walk along the side of it you might notice the apartments with their balconies up above. When you step into the building it really takes off, bringing you on a kaleidoscopic journey that's almost like entering a fantasy land and there's lots of great food from all parts of the world. The innovative shape of the roof is further complemented by the amazing mural depicting a cornucopia of the foods that are on offer in the market along with flowers and butterflies. This unique artwork covers 11,000 m² making it reputedly the largest picture in the world it was created by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam. Open all day every day until 8 PM and at night it looks even more spectacular. We will be showing you a lot of that evening scene later in the program. The Markthal in Rotterdam is one of the most outstanding modern buildings you'll ever see. It's an incredible enclosed food court in a big U-shape, with apartments all up above and around, and a tremendous huge food market down here in the middle. They've got restaurants, they've got take-away foods, they've got snack bars, there is a supermarket downstairs, a wine bar, a lot of beer, a lot of people, fresh produce, cheese, everything you can imagine, a hundred different food booths, 20 different restaurants. It's just a great spot in the heart of Rotterdam. It's got cheese, noodles, pasta, pizza, sushi, frozen yogurt, fish and chips, churros, fresh fruits, French baked goods, Italian, Spanish, Asian, Dutch, Indian, Vietnamese, Turkish, Lebanese, Syrian, Chinese, Greek. There's salads, coffee, cappuccino, donuts and cupcakes, chocolates, licorice, seafood, sausages, spice, frittes, calamari, Portuguese custard tarts, nuts, herbs, dried fruits, waffles, wine shops, bakeries, tapas, hams, olives, tapenade, juices, mushrooms, Croquettes. There is a kitchen utility shop. It is one of the few retail stores here in a place you could easily spend a lot of euro. An Asian grocery store, bubble tea, sandwiches, burgers, crepes, and more. The attraction of coming to the Markthal is only secondarily about the food, the wonderful food that's here, with the tremendous international variety that we will show you in a moment - but of course you can find lots of restaurants and food shops anywhere in town. The impact of the Markthal is more about the total experience, the setting, the building, the mural, the people, the wonderful combination of fast food, gourmet food and markets all around you framed in some kind of miraculous building. It's an amazing unique combination. The artist Coenen explained, “You could just look at the wonderful, almost psychedelic picture for it’s beauty, which points out the miracle that food is there for you,” ‘It is a work with a spiritual, religious feel to it. However, its larger-than-life size is not a tale of religion; it’s about nature. The attraction of coming to the market hall is only secondarily about the food, the wonderful food that's here with the tremendous international variety that we will show you in a moment - but of course you can find lots of restaurants and food shops anywhere in town. The impact of the marked hall is more about the total experience, the setting, the building, the mural, the people, the wonderful combination of fast food gourmet food and markets all around you. It's an amazing unique combination. Open all day every day until 8 PM and at night it looks even more spectacular will be showing you a lot of that evening seen later in the program. The Market Hall in Rotterdam is one of the most outstanding modern buildings you'll ever see. It's an incredible enclosed food court in a big U-shape, with apartments all up above and around and a tremendous huge food market down here in the middle. They've got restaurants, they've got take-away foods, they've got snack bars, there is a supermarket downstairs, a wine bar, a lot of beer, a lot of people, fresh produce, cheese everything you can imagine, a hundred different food booths, 20 different restaurants. It's just a great spot in the heart of Rotterdam.

[The Lawspeaker]

We are visiting Rotterdam's Maritime Museum in the Netherlands and taking a tour boat ride in Rotterdam's giant harbor, Europe's busiest port. The museum has a grand display covering 600 years of Dutch naval history, with many up-to-date exhibits on life today in houseboats, and more. The harbor cruise is a great place for views of the stunning ultramodern skyscrapers recently built along the waterfront, continuing into the working shipyard, moving 12 million containers annually.

You will love the Dutch city of Delft. It is one of the most famous, historical and beautiful towns in the Netherlands, preserved in picture book perfection. It's also a modern city that functions very well for its hundred thousand resident as you're going to see in this comprehensive video guide.

We're visiting the Dutch city of Gouda in this practical guide to seeing the highlights of Gouda, in Holland, in the Netherlands. Most famous for Gouda cheese, but there are many other attractions to enjoy in this beautiful Dutch city. It has some fine examples of that special Dutch feature of the reflecting canals lined by flowers and pedestrian lanes. But here we've got several of these charming neighborhoods we'll show you in the video, and the important building where the cheese was weighed on the main town square. The Weighing House, or Waag, has for centuries been a central point in town where the all-important cheese was weighed and deals were made. It now contains the Tourist Information Center and the Cheese and Crafts Museum where you can taste and purchase a variety of cheeses. The Markt, or marketplace, is the central plaza in the heart of town, home to countless pubs, restaurants and cozy sidewalk cafes. The exquisitely proportioned Stadhuys, or City Hall, is a gem of late Gothic and early Renaissance architecture, dating from 1449-59. The traditional cheese market takes place in the plaza every Thursday mornings 10 AM till 1230 from April through the end of August. The street alongside the marketplace is one of the busiest in town with lots of shops, and especially the restaurants and bars and cafés – usually buzzing with people. One block away, Groote Kerk, or Great Church, also called Saint John Church, was founded in 1485 and rebuilt after a fire in 1562. The round-arched arcades are borne by 36 pillars supporting the lofty barrel-vaulted ceiling of dark wood. It is the longest church in the Netherlands, at 123 meters. Our walking route, starting at the train station and down to that central market square, into the church, then we'll continue along a beautiful canal down to the harbor, and then circling back around in a complete round trip walking tour of the city, and ending up back at the train station. Now we continue along the Westhaven canal. You can easily walk along this splendid canal from the town center, only 600 meters distance - it'll take you about five minutes - down to the historic harbor where you will find clippers, barges and sailing vessels lying majestically alongside each other in the Museum Harbor, and most of these are still lived in. In the Middle Ages, due to its central location, the town offered passage to ships en-route to Amsterdam and Flanders. After the 15th century, Gouda's role in international shipping went into decline. Walking back towards the center from the harbor, you'll see another historic site – it's a windmill, very characteristic of the Netherlands. We're taking a circular route through town, walking along yet another beautiful canal, observing all these bicycles going back and forth. You can actually rent a bicycle here if you'd like to peddle around in town or even extend out to some of the surrounding areas. This route to the harbor, and then returning along a few of the less traveled back lanes, gets you off the beaten track. It's an easy stroll that doesn't take much time, and this route can bring you past another few blocks of shopping. Here you can see a benefit of being here when the cheese market is not on – you will not see very many other tourists. Then passing along a few residential blocks with their old-fashioned buildings. It's nice to get away from the historic highlights for a while and into a neighborhood that's more for locals. It's quiet and peaceful over here. Then you will come around the bend and find what is perhaps the prettiest of the canal scenes in town along what's called the Turfmarkt. Turf was that peat, or combustible decaying soil that was very important to the old Dutch for cooking and heating their homes, much like in Ireland and elsewhere in the north of Europe. This route takes us back to the center at the marketplace. There's a lovely block behind the market square. We can have a peek at it showing that very special Dutch combination of shop fronts along a pedestrian lane next to a charming little canal – circles on the map and next to it is the new market, a modern little shopping mall. Gouda is generally visited as a daytrip from other nearby cities, which are only 20 to 30 minutes away by train. Even all the way to Amsterdam is just 52 minutes. So you can easily visit Gouda for most of the day without spending the night there. Or if you wish to overnight, there are some fine hotels such as a four-star Best Western. The superb Dutch rail system makes it very easy to travel around in this relatively small nation, as you will see in our many other movies about the Netherlands, where we take you to all of the highlights of this wonderful country.

We’re in Leiden, Netherlands. enjoying the pleasures of this beautiful town. It's another one of the great historic cities of the Netherlands, most famous perhaps for the University. It's the oldest university in the Netherlands, founded back in the mid-16th century and so there's a lot of university students here. And it's not as touristic, certainly not nearly as crowded, as a place like Amsterdam, which is only about 1/2 an hour away by train. So it's really a refreshing change to come and visit smaller cities like Leiden. This city has got the canals running through it, as most Dutch cities do. And here it's really quite special, the canals come right through the middle of the old town. There's half a dozen of these very peaceful waterways, especially nice in the morning, busy in the afternoon with lots of people out walking around shopping, eating and drinking. During the program you will get a good look at most of the interesting parts of Leiden. I'll take you on a thorough walking tour, we will go down some of the main lanes, the little back lanes, side lanes. We will see the University and its botanical gardens. We will walk along canals and we'll just show you this town inside and out. Starting in this central part of the city, probably the most attractive and popular place to spend time, where the Old Rhine canal and New Rhine canal come together.

Leiden is one of the great cities of the Netherlands. In this segment on Leiden we’re taking you on a canal boat tour. It's a great way to get an overview of the city while sitting and relaxing for an hour and watching the historic buildings glide by. They say Leiden has more canals than any other Dutch city besides Amsterdam. They extend for 28 kilometers within the inner-city and are crossed by 88 bridges, some of which are quite low so you gotta keep your head down when you go beneath them/ It has all of those historic and pictorial charms that you would hope for in a quaint Dutch town -- a city of canals, pedestrian zones, historic buildings and bicycles -- in many ways a typical Dutch town but in others, something quite special. It has the oldest university in the Netherlands with 30,000 students among the 120,000 city population. One of the oldest cities of the country founded about 1000 years ago but with a young population and so many things for the visitor to see and do you could easily spend a couple of days here: drop in on some of its 200 restaurants, 60 bars, thousand shops, many along the pedestrian lanes, explore historic monuments such as this elaborate gatehouse through the medieval wall, one of two surviving gates from the old days, get educated and entertained at one of the half-dozen important museums and stay in one of the 22 hotels offering 3000 rooms. Leiden is located just 40 minutes away from Amsterdam by train, or 20 minutes away from the airport by direct train -- easy to reach yet like many Dutch cities it's overlooked by most of those millions of visitors to Amsterdam who rarely venture beyond that big city. They're missing out on a lot that the Netherlands has to offer as will be showing you in our series. The route that we will be taking in our one hour boat tour goes through some of the most beautiful of the canals of the city in a big loop and then coming back to where we started. I was lucky to take what turned out to be a private tour. Well, nobody else showed up for the departure and Tim very gallantly said okay let's go and took me on a one hour boat ride. He works with a very special boat tour company that relies on 60 volunteers to do most of the driving and guiding. A lot of retirees and other interested residents of Leiden pitch in and help out. The boat company is De Leidse Rederij at https://www.leidserederij.nl/c/