Most people travel only to 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 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. 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 Apeldoorn, 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.





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