When I was 16 I traveled to Europe.  One of the countries I visited was Holland.  I spent most of my time in the countryside, but I also spent a few days in Amsterdam.

A recent New York Times article (September 20^th, 2009 by Beth Greenfield), “The Amsterdam of Playgrounds and Pancakes” explains that Amsterdam is a good country to visit with your children.

I believe that families would find Amsterdam’s cobbled streets, house boats and mellow atmosphere a great place to bring children who are old enough to  appreciate the different architectural and cultural landscape from back home.  For example, as the article mentions, the Anne Frank House  totally enchanted my teenage mind.  Days after, I found myself day dreaming about Anne’s life and had specific images to go with my thoughts.  The book had really contextualized a piece of history for me, but the house enabled me to see the concreteness of it all --a regular home, a regular child and the horrible things can happen within that context.  You may think, “oh, I don’t want that kind of realization formy child on vacation”, but I think that for me it was reassuring to see that the world still continued after such events.

There’s nothing really special about Dutch cuisine, but The Pannekoeks (pancake) is considered a local dish eaten any time of day.  When I visited, I ate three plates of poffertjes, a style of pancake that is small and served on a plate that looks like an egg poacher.  They are doused in butter and powdered sugar.  I liked them so much I ate three plates and got very, very sick.  I ate them in a small town that I visited after a long bike ride.  The restaurant was an open air structure that resembled a carousel.

This brings me to bicycles.   Holland is so flat and so wonderfully conducive to traveling by bicycle.  The bike paths are plentiful, the spaces wide and there are many places to park your bike.   I find that cycling is a great way to visit a place like Holland with children.  Children and teenagers have so much energy to spend and parents don’t always want to spend their vacation going to playgrounds.  Biking enables the child to follow along, while the parents look at the passing landscape.

I also went camping in the Netherlands.  It seems like many Dutch folks love to camp and the campgrounds have lush grass to set up your tent.  Unfortunately, I cannot give you specific information about my travels since I was young and did not think that 18 years later I would be sharing this information with anybody.

So if you are interested in visiting the Netherlands with your children, I recommend you read the NYT article for starters.

Heidi

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