My good buddy Kier, whom i met while working in Alaska years ago, now lives in Holland. I took the ferry from Harwich across the channel to Rotterdam area; that was fun. I stayed with him for a few days and we had a blast checking out the real Holland.
The week before i got there they cut the flowers, so sad. But the countryside was still awesome and the Dutch are a very simple people. Everyone rides bikes everywhere. Amsterdam is a really cool place with water channels and small bridges everywhere. The Haag was a nice, very simple and administrative sort of town. Rotterdam didn't have much to see, but I just went through it on my way to the Hague, so maybe I missed some stuff.
The coolest thing was our trip to the northern island of Tesol. We took the train north to Van Der hook, then ferried across a small channel. When we started our bike ride across the island, we told ourselves 10 miles wasn't too far. It started off easy, with a strong wind pushing us along. It crossed our minds that maybe the ride back to the boat would be tough, headed straight into the wind. Oh how we underestimated the difficulty of the return! We almost died, I haven't exerted myself that much since two-a-days in high school.
We had a nice lunch at a small-town cafe, and saw the lighthouse and the beaches on the north end. Overall, it was a very memorable day.
And almost everyone speaks excellent english, especially the younger people, it was amazing.