The awesome city of Gouda is a pearl among Dutch highlights. Monumental beauty surrounds a romantic cheese market. The best the Netherlands has to offer.
Dutch products on the cheese market.
Because of its beauty Gouda deserves a place of honour on your Dutch bucket list. In this monumental city you find a triangular market in the middle of which stands the excellently restaurated gothic Town Hall. This magic building could be the entrance to wonderland. But it is the decorum of the weekly cheese market. In the streets around the square you find cheese and chocolate shops. Irresistible ice cream parlours. Vintage liquor shops and countless monuments along the canals and the River Gouwe. Yes there is a lot of water around Gouda. Rent a boat in the nearby village of Reeuwijk and go of the beaten track. Remember that you are below sealevel. The deepest point of Holland, just beside Gouda, is more than 20 feet below the sea.
Gouda: monuments, beer and philosophy.
Gouda has a well preserved and rich history. Of course there were fires in the 15th century destroying the city. And people were killed when the city was struck with pestilence and cholera in the 17th century. But Gouda is a good-humoured survivor who creates a magnificent church and a ghotic Town Hall. At the end of the 15th century the breweries of Gouda produce 15,000,000 liters of beer a year. In this era Desiderius Erasmus is born as the second unlawful sun of a Catholic priest in Gouda. After his parents died of pestilence Erasmus is placed under custody. Erasmus legal guardian insists that he goes into the monastery of Stein near Gouda.
Rest on the canal. 
Chocolate
Things to do in Gouda, Netherlands.
- Rent a bike (€12,50 a day) at the railway station and discover Gouda and the surroundings. You could make a trip to the 19 windmills at Kinderdijk or bike to Schoonhoven.
- Visit the cheese market on a Thursday morning between 10:00 en 12.30 in the period of april till september.
- Find antiques and vintage stuff on the Wednesday market (9.30 – 16.30) in the market square in the centre, around the Town Hall. The weekly markets start in the middle of June and end in the middle of September.
- Enjoy a free Sunday afternoon concert in the Houtmans Plantsoen. The first concert is in the middle of June and the last concert is in the end of August.
- The Great Church (123 meters long) was a Catholic Church until the sixteenth century. In the yaer 1566 Protestants took over the church. They destroyed the statues but preserved the windows. The alomost 600 years old stained glass windows are worldfamous.
- Sweeten up yourself and visit the Kamphuisen syrup waffles factory in Gouda. Here you find a secret recipe for syrup waffles.
Clock Town Hall 
Detail Gouda Glass 
One of the 72 stained glass windows.
