Many people think of Venice as the land of canals, wrong. Holland is the real Land of Canals. Venice is built in on the water, but Holland has built canals all around the country for transportation. In Amsterdam, every other street is a canal.
Here is a typical street in Amsterdam, small road on each side of the canal (which is lined with parked boats).
We went to Holland (or is it Netherlands) at the end of April, peek flower season. We went to the "original" rose parade (although they didn't have any roses, but Pasadena doesn't have that many either). Lots of floats with flowers, and a whole bunch of tulips. This is the only marathon parade we've ever heard of, it was a 14- hour route going up the coast through the tulip farms towards Amsterdam. They got a lunch and dinner break, although we think they changed marching bands at the breaks. It was a little rainy that day, so we sat in our car (which was actually on the parade route) and watched out the window.
Here is float # 42.
If you're in the area, you must stop at Keukenhof, the famous tulip grower. You can order from many hundreds of varieties of tulips that will be delivered to your door anywhere in the world. We're expecting our truckload to come anytime now.
These are real, not plastic. There were fields of blooming tulips as far as you could see and in every direction.
A visit to Holland is not complete without a visit to the windmills. You can find them in many places; we visited a little traditional village named Zaanse Schans.
Here are the girls in front of real working windmills. We climbed up the middle one to the top. The power of the grinding wheel inside is very impressive.
And let us not forget Amsterdam. We started with our usual city tour, and when in Amsterdam you travel by bike. There are more bikes than cars by far; parked bikes line every street. There are bike lanes, and crossing them is far more dangerous than crossing the street with cars, buses, and trams. Boats are the second most popular mode of transportation in the city.
Amsterdam is the city that tolerates almost anything. We found a great variety of food and entertainment. The coffee shops are very interesting, although we didn't find anyone drinking coffee there (they do have menus, but we didn't look). Amsterdam is also famous for the window-shopping; they must sell a lot of lingerie here. A lot of people (of all ages) do there shopping at night too.
Oh yes, the checkpoint test. After a day of visiting the windmills and dining on the docks at a fishing village we ran into a checkpoint upon our return to Amsterdam. An Amsterdam jail passed before my eyes. But fortunately one (large) bier with dinner allowed me to pass. Two days later my heart stopped racing.