Experience the best of Alkmaar

Alkmaar's old centre is a tight oval of canals, gabled houses and narrow shopping streets. The Waagplein is its stage: the weigh house, a former chapel, stands at one end of the square, and the cheese market, a summer tradition, draws crowds, with porters in white and coloured straw hats carrying loaves on wooden barrows. A cheese museum fills part of the building.

In 1573 the town withstood a Spanish siege, a turning point remembered in the saying that victory begins at Alkmaar. The tall tower of the Grote Kerk rises over the roofs. Egmond aan Zee and Bergen aan Zee have broad sand beaches a short ride to the west, with dunes and woods behind them crossed by cycling paths.

Cheese is the town's trade, and local Gouda and Edam rounds, young and aged, fill the shops around the square, with apple pie in the cafés beside the canals. Boat trips run through the canals in the warmer months. The market season is the high point, running through spring and summer, though the town is pleasant at any time of year.