Northern Europe & UK

Rotterdam, The Netherlands (Amsterdam)

Rotterdam does innovation and imagination like nowhere else. The Nazi bombardment gutted most, but not all, of the old city. As a result, modern glass skyscrapers stand next to 19th and 18th century buildings. So many modern masterpieces demand your camera’s attention, none more so than the extraordinary tilted Cube Houses. They are simply inspired! In Amsterdam take a poignant tour of Anne Frank’s house, where the famous diarist lived in secret with her family for two years or take a boat trip along those picturesque canals and admire some of the city’s 6,000 protected historic buildings.

Highlights

AMSTERDAM
Experience this fabled city of canals on a comprehensive city tour that travels by land and on water.

CUBE HOUSES
Designed by Piet Blom in the ‘70s, the Cube Houses were intended as a post-Modern ‘village’.

DELFHAVEN
Delfhaven is the birthplace of Erasmus and the port of departure for America’s ‘Pilgrim Fathers’.

DELFT FACTORY
The Delft factory creates its famed earthenware using the same methods employed since the factory’s founding in 1653.

KINDERDIJK
Windmills are vanishing from the Dutch landscape. The 19 windmills at Kinderdijk date from the mid-18th century and many remain in working order.

MAURITSHUIS
Housed in a 17th century palace, the Mauritshuis boasts a peerless collection of masterworks by Hals, Rembrandt, Steen and Vermeer.

MEVLANA MOSQUE
Designed by Dutch architect Bert Toorman, the pastel-coloured mosque features Ottoman style minarets.

THE HAGUE
Administrative capital of the Netherlands, The Hague is home to Parliament, royal palaces, and the International Court of Justice.