Metzinger has good suggestions.

Heading more or less southwest out of Amsterdam you pass interesting towns like Haarlem, Leiden, etc., as well as North Sea beach towns like Zandvoort (where the Dutch Grand Prix - Formula 1 - used to be). Eventually this gets you to the Hague, which has some interesting sights, as well as a pretty cool casino along the beach (Scheveningen area).

Leiden is where there is a large university, so there are museums, student areas, as well as an old stone windmill that belonged to Rembrandt's parents, and was where he spent his childhood (or part of it) - living in the lower floor(s) of the windmill.

You can also do an interesting loop of towns that lie northeast of Amsterdam, more or less by riding around/along the IJselmeer (what used to be called the Zuider Zee):

http://www.mayq.com/Best_european_tr...IJsselmeer.htm

Some of the towns along the way include Edam (yes, where the red-wax covered cheese comes from), Volendam, and Marken (the last two, especially Marken, are still very traditional towns, villages). There is also a pretty cool castle in Muiden, and I remember eating some good pannekuchen at a restuarant in nearby Muiderslot. Plus closer in to Amsterdam is the Zaanse Schans, which is sort of an historical park, centered around a cluster of old wooden windmills:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaanse_Schans

I remember driving around in this area some years ago, and stumbling on some local festivals - in Edam they were having these "cheese races" in which guys carrying wooden "stretchers" loaded with stacked cheeses would race around the town square, trying to not let the cheeses roll off. In Volendam they were having sort of a town fair/carnival - lots of nice smoked eel on a stick to nibble on!

I used to go to the Netherlands on business pretty often, and always tried to wander around as much as possible. Some other interesting towns include Delft (where the pottery/dishes are made), Gouda (yes, another cheese), Naarden ( an old walled city, with a very cool old church, where you can climb up the very tall bell-tower).

http://www.google.com/images?rlz=1C1...ed=0CDoQsAQwBA

Everywhere is pretty flat. Certainly in the cities and towns what you will mostly see is people using traditional commuter bikes as transportation (often with totally-enclosed chains, to keep clothes dry and grease-free). But a lot of Dutch people also are road cycling enthusiasts.

I liked Dutch food a fair amount - including the afore-mentioned pannekuchen (basically pancakes, but sometimes with dinner-type fillings, such as is done with crepes). I was also partial to the various kinds of schnitzel-type dishes, some with eggs and cheeses on them, plus a pork-tenderloin dish called Varkenshaas. And the ice-cream sundaes are amazing (IJs is the basic word for ice-cream - the J is also capitalized to indicate that the IJ are together as one letter, pronounced as a long I). Mostly vanilla ice cream, at least as I remember it, but with any number of fruit and other toppings. And then there is IJs met Advocaat, which is ice cream with an egg-based liqueur over it.

There are also lots of Indonesian Rijs-Tafel (basically rice table) restaurants around, reflecting the old connections to the Dutch East Indies.

Of course the most well-known Dutch beer brands are all sort of mass-market (Heineken, Amstel, and Grolsch), but if you look around you can find more craft-type beers. Back some years ago when I was traveling there, they were trying to hold the price of a beer to be a standard 2 Guilders. But as costs went up, instead of raising the price, they instead kept using smaller and smaller glasses. Finally it got to the point where you were basically getting a juice glass of beer for your 2 Guilders. Then they finally made the big jump to some higher price (maybe even 5 Guilders), and brought out the big glasses again.... Don't know what the practice is like now...