A leading colonial power, its mercantile fleets once challenged the best in the world for supremacy, and the country enjoyed a so-called "Golden Age" of prosperity in the seventeenth century. These days, the Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest population density in Europe, its sixteen million or so inhabitants (most of whom speak English) concentrated into an area about the size of southern England.

Most people travel only to the uniquely atmospheric capital, Amsterdam : the rest of the country, despite its accessibility, is comparatively untouched by tourism. The west of the country is the most populated and most historically interesting region - unrelentingly flat territory, much of it reclaimed, that is home to a grouping of towns known collectively as the Randstad (literally "rim town"). It's a good idea to forsake Amsterdam for a day or two and investigate places like Haarlem , Leiden and Delft with their old canal-girded centres, the gritty port city of Rotterdam , or The Hague , stately home of the government and the Dutch royals. Outside the Randstad, life moves more slowly. The province of Zeeland , in the southwest, is the country at its most remote, its inhabitants a sturdy, distant people, busy with farming and fishing and hardly connected to the mainland. In the north, Groningen is a busy cultural centre, lent verve by its large resident student population. To the south, around the town of Arnhem , the landscape undulates into heathy moorland, best experienced in the Hoge Veluwe national park. Further south still lies the compelling city of Maastricht , squeezed between the German and Belgian borders.