The Netherlands: Time and tide

Heritage buildings and classic sailing boats in Hoorn Harbour. Photo / Liz Light

Liz Light finds Hoorn is steeped in Netherlands history.

Hoorn's two most famous sons were rollicking adventurers who made their mark on the world 400 years ago. Willem Schouten set sail to find a back way from Europe to the spice islands of South Asia. Instead of sailing around Africa, he headed west, along the coast of Argentina and around the storm-lashed tip of South America, which he named Cape Horn after his hometown. He indisputably proved the world was round.

At the same time, Jan Pieterszoon Coen set sail the other way and, rather ruthlessly, established Batavia (Jakarta) as the Indonesian base for the Dutch East India Company.

Hoorn, a calm and safe port on the now largely reclaimed Zuiderzee inland sea, was one of the bases for the Dutch East India Company. Its seafaring and trading men established a fleet that sailed the seven seas and returned laden with precious commodities. Silk, spices, cotton, copper, porcelain, tea, indigo and sugar were all traded here at huge profits.

In the golden years, from 1600 to 1750, merchants built grand houses, guild halls, magnificent churches and impressive civic buildings. But good things end and, by the late 1700s, the English dominated the sea, the French occupied Holland and Hoorn withered to become a fishing town. But the gorgeous buildings of the golden years remain.

I arrive while I'm asleep, in the early hours of the morning, on the River Empress, a cigar-shaped ship, purpose-built for Uniworld to be long, low and thin, as is required for canal and river cruising.

When I wake, River Empress is tied next to the harbour's massive stone defensive gate, built in 1532. The grand houses along the waterfront, once warehouses in the lower floors with homes on top, are so old that some lean forward and others sideways.

It's a blue-sky day and such a pretty place that I'm impatient to get into it. But it is worth waiting for Uniworld's local guide.

Klaus is irreverent and witty and instead of taking our little group on a detail-filled heritage tour, we stroll around the streets and drop into a bottle shop to sample Dutch gin, a fishmonger's for raw herring and into a 300-year-old pub for a lively espresso.

All the while, Klaus is telling stories mingled with jokes that take the mickey out of himself and his countrymen and I find I'm learning about Hoorn's history and Dutch temperament in a mirthful way.

Hams, sausage and herrings at a Hoorn Deli. Photo / Liz Light

Rode Steen, Red Square, was the civic heart of Hoorn. Here large, ornate buildings make statements of 17th-century corporate prosperity. The Waag, with its unicorn crest and gothic roofline, was the weigh-house, the council building, which held power over northern Holland. It has an elaborate wedding-cake facade and is now a museum. A splendid statue of Coen - big nose, furrowed brow, curly moustache and huge sword - stands in the middle of the square.

His famous quote, "Spare your enemies not, for God is with us," justified the killing of thousands of Indonesians but God wasn't with him, apparently, and he died, aged 42, in a cholera outbreak in Batavia.

The amble from the port to the city centre had me thinking Hoorn was primarily a historic city, a living prop for a heritage movie, but adjoining the square, the pedestrian-only main street is bustling with modern shops featuring the usual European chain stores and a McDonald's.

Hoorn, still a busy service centre, elegantly combines hundreds of years of heritage with modern services.

I walk back along the sea edge to the old port where marinas are full of boats with halyards clanging in brisk breeze. The fearless adventuring of Schouten and Coen is over but the sons of Hoorn are still sailors.

Fact file

For more information on Uniworld's 10-day Tulips & Windmills river cruise between Amsterdam and Antwerp, visit uniworldcruises.co.nz

Cathay Pacific has daily flights to Amsterdam via Hong Kong.