Experience the best of Gouda

Gouda lies in South Holland, north-east of Rotterdam, on the Hollandse IJssel river and ringed by canals. At its centre stands the Markt, a broad square dominated by the Stadhuis, a Gothic town hall of the 1440s with a carillon whose figures act out the granting of the town's charter. The Waag, a weigh house of 1668 on the same square, is now a cheese museum.

The Sint-Janskerk is the longest church in the Netherlands, famed for its sixteenth-century stained-glass windows, and Museum Gouda occupies a former hospital. The Reeuwijk lakes lie to the north, Oudewater, with its witches' weighing house, to the east, and the windmills of Kinderdijk to the south-west. Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht are all a short train ride away.

Gouda cheese, young and creamy or aged and crystalline, is sold in wheels at the town's cheese market on summer mornings, and stroopwafels, thin waffles sandwiched with caramel syrup, are a local sweet. Each December candles light the town hall square. Spring and summer suit a canal-side cycle ride.