The Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country in part reclaimed from the blue-black waters of the North Sea, an artificially created land, around half of which lies at or below sea level. It's a country of unique and resonant images – the fertile, pancake-flat landscapes gridded with canals and interrupted by windmills and church spires, all beneath huge, open skies. Occupying a delta at the confluence of three major rivers where they empty into the North Sea, it is truly a water world: canals, coast and lakes are never far from view.
Compeering in the past as a major colonial power, the Dutch mercantile fleet once challenged the English and the Spanish for world naval supremacy, and throughout its seventeenth-century Golden Age, the standard of living was second to none. There have been a few economic ups and downs since then, but today the Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in the world, small and urban, with the highest population density in Europe, its sixteen million inhabitants concentrated into an area of 41,848 sq. km. It's an international, well-integrated place too: most of the people speak foreign languages, at least in the heavily populated west of the country; and most of the country is easy to reach on a public transport system of trains and buses.
Every city in the country has its ornately gabled town houses, the greatest and most noble in Amsterdam, while the bulbfields provide bold splashes of colour in springtime; in the west the long coastline is marked by mile upon mile of protective dune, backing onto wide stretches of pristine, sandy beach.
Compared to mega-cities like New York, London, Paris or even Cologne, the Dutch cities are very hip and relaxed. Amsterdam is the capital and largest city and this is visible in almost any corner of it. It is a place representing fully the Netherlands, but standing out from the other cities of the country like more unique and different. Due to the bombardment that leveled the city and the renovations that followed, the second biggest city - Rotterdam is the only real modern town of the Netherlands and the largest seaport in the world. Maastricht is the most important city of the South. The town is pretty and is a good base for exploring the countryside as well as making day-trips to Aachen and Liege. In Leiden or Utrecht you can see the big 17th century mansions once owned by the commanders of the Dutch fleet and those of the rich merchants who financed the wars with their overseas gains.
Not depending of the cities that you'll visit in Holland (as the country is alternatively referred to) you'll meet tolerant people, ever open to outside influence, the placing a high value on a quality they call gezelligheid: a sense of cosiness and conviviality that's immediately apparent to anyone who's ever stepped into a bruin café, the Dutch version of a pub. The object of all their scrupulous planning, it seems, is to share their enjoyment of life.