The Gouda Cheese Market

Ain't she great?

OK, I'm not going to lie: the whole point of this post is this photograph. It's one of my favorites from our time in the Netherlands. Is it a cliché? Absolutely. People don't walk around looking like that these days. But I love this picture, because it has a bit of everything Dutch. There's the wonderful, hundreds-year-old City Hall, standing on the town square with an even older cathedral in the background. There are the cheese wheels and the traditional dress and clogs everywhere. There's even a horse, and all perfectly framed. Well, almost. I cut a bit off the top of City Hall. I won't tell anyone, if you won't.

And the colors. The orange of the cheese. The blue of the sky. The yellow of the flag, and the red of her dress. I really love this picture.

The City Hall.

While Gouda is a lovely town, the Cheese Market itself is a bit of kitsch put on for the visitors. And

that's fine. The town's name is associated with cheese. More than 60 percent of the country's famous cheeses are made in the polders around Gouda, in what is known as cheese valley. And all this has been going on since 1395. So the town has every right to flaunt its nostalgia for the visitors.

Wheeling and dealing, if you'll pardon the pun.

The market, which is held on Thursday mornings during the summer is more like a historic reenactment, though there is a full-on market in the rest of the town square. This makes a visit utterly worthwhile. There are your obligatory - and marvelous - bread vans, cheese vans, fish vans, fruit and veg vans. It's all action and all wonderful.

The Cheese Market is for the visitors. Actors play the roles of cheese purchaser and buyer. They haggle away as they did in days of yore. Then they seal their deal with an elaborate hand slapping process that somewhat resembles teenagers with their secret handshakes.