Amsterdam

It was a bit of an impulse that took us to Amsterdam for the week, a city that neither of us had visited before but had always wanted to. We stayed at the Pulitzer Hotel overlooking the prinzengraacht, or "prince's canal", shown below with an array of houseboats in the foreground and the tower of the Westkerk behind.

Amsterdam, most of it at or below sea level, is a city of canals, the banks of which are cluttered with elegant row houses, many of them dating from the 17th Century.
Although the city is best known for its Red Light District, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Anne Frank, we really enjoyed the Vogelpark, the Hortus (botanical gardens) and the Artis (Zoo).

You are as likely to see modern wind turbines as you are the classic windmills when traveling in the Netherlands these days, as Holland obtains more of its energy needs from non-petroleum sources than any other industrial nation.
In addition to Amsterdam, we took a day trip to the Hague, which has an interesting mix of old and new architecture.