An Auto-matic Way of Seeing the Netherlands

Much has been made of how easy it is to get around the Netherlands by train. It’s true.

But it’s just as easy, and in many ways more rewarding, to see the country by car.

Dutch roads are excellent and very well marked. Distances between sights are short, so that you can cover several areas in even a one-week visit. Most important, you have the option of stopping whenever you wish.

Car travel in the Netherlands is especially rewarding during the spring tulip season. A suggestion: Follow the tulip trail on a weekday. Weekend traffic is slow going because every Amsterdamer is making the same jaunt.

The biggest surprise to a foreign motorist in the Netherlands is how short the distances are made by expressways linking major cities.

The two of us in our rental car took turns as navigator and pilot. We left the rental office at 9:15 a.m. with a detailed road map, planning a brief detour to Haarlem 15 miles west of Amsterdam.

You might also arm yourself with “Tourist Menu Restaurants,” a free Netherlands Board of Tourism booklet that lists restaurants throughout the country that offer specially priced tourist menus, with three-course dinners for about $9.95 per person.

It took only 20 minutes from central Amsterdam over a super-fast highway. Then we discovered that the Franz Hals Museum didn’t open until 11 a.m., giving us more than an hour to wander through Haarlem, browse for antiques along Kleine Houtstraat and wander through the Great Market and the 14th-Century cathedral, the Church of St. Bavo.

We even discovered a new museum, the Corrie Ten Boom House, used by a Dutch Christian family as a hiding place for Jews and Nazi refugees during World War II.

The Franz Hals Museum in a 17th-Century almshouse was well worth the wait. In addition to many paintings by Hals it has fine works by other 17th-Century Dutch masters. A quick lunch in the museum’s coffee shop and we were on the road again.

It was a brief drive on N208 to the turn-off to Lisse and the Keukenhof flower garden. Along the side roads we stopped to photograph brilliant red, yellow and purple tulip fields. Keukenhof was a feast of color, with beautifully landscaped flower beds full of bulbs we had never seen. A devout gardener could spend an entire day wandering the 70-acre parkland, gardens and greenhouses.

Later we cruised through Leiden for a once-over-lightly precis of the old university town’s cobbled streets, canals and red tile-roofed buildings before returning to the E19 and continuing south.

We spent our first night at the Delta Hotel on a waterway in Vlaardingen, a suburb west of Rotterdam. The eye level close view of ships cruising up the waterway, visible from the dining room, lounge and bedrooms, made up for the hotel’s rather pedestrian food.

Our second day began with Delft (just off a major artery, E19), a town interlaced with canals and so post-card pretty that it seems almost unreal. Delft has ancient churches, but its principal charm is its Dutch village character.

You can spend hours just walking over canal bridges and sitting at a sidewalk cafe on Markt Square with its 14th-Century Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), or shopping for the famous Delft china. Delft has two four-star hotels, the De Ark and Museumhotel, and several fine restaurants.

From Delft we headed east on E19, avoiding Rotterdam’s industrial center, to the Lek River, a narrow scenic waterway dotted with 19 windmills, one of which is open as the Kinderdijk Windmill Museum. By late afternoon we reached Gouda, a short hop off a main superhighway, E25.

With its Market Square, Gothic town hall, stone churches, canals and cheese shops, Gouda is another quintessential Dutch town. Its market days--Thursday and Saturday--are especially colorful.

North of Utrecht we stayed at at the Hotel Residence Vinkeveen, again with views of canals. We found several very good restaurants; our dinner at the French Buitenlust was one of the best during our trip.

The final day we backtracked to Utrecht to visit the Catharijne Convent Museum, with its European medieval art in a 17th-Century convent.

We spent our last night at the Apollo Hotel near the Amsterdam outskirts, in order to drive with ease to Schiphol Airport for our departure the following day.

It was a tulip tour with lasting memories.

Major U.S. rental car agencies have Amsterdam offices, as do many local Dutch agencies. The best current Avis deal is a five- to seven-day rate of $244 (plus 18 1/2% tax) on a two-door, stick-shift Ford Fiesta with unlimited mileage and all liability insurance included, to be booked in the United States with at least two days’ advance notice. Call toll-free (800) 331-1212.

If you book two weeks ahead, you receive a free Avis Travel Planner, 35 pages of detailed driving directions, offbeat locations, recommended routes and helpful hotel and restaurant suggestions.