Netherlands

Amsterdam works best at water level. Take a private boat through the canal rings at golden hour, gables reflected around you, and the seventeenth century feels close enough to touch. The museums here punch far above the country's size: Rembrandt and Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum, an entire building of Van Gogh next door. But the Dutch art of living happens outside them too, in brown cafés, cheese shops, and markets that have run for centuries. Then borrow the national vehicle. Cycling here is not sport, it is culture, and flat, safe paths lead everywhere: through tulip fields in blazing spring stripes, past working windmills at Kinderdijk, into storybook towns like Delft and Utrecht. In April, the Keukenhof gardens perform their world-famous colour explosion. Easy, charming and effortlessly civilised.