Alkmaar

Alkmaar has held a cheese market on the Waagplein since the seventeenth century and it still runs on Friday mornings from spring to autumn, in the form the guild established: the cheeses are laid out in rows, dealers test them by smell and taste and settle prices by handclap, and the carriers - members of a guild in white with coloured straw hats denoting their company - run the wheels to the weighhouse on wooden barrows at a trot. It is a demonstration now rather than commerce, and everyone knows it, but the guild and the practices are genuine. The Waag itself is a fourteenth-century chapel converted in 1582 with a carillon and mechanical figures. The town beyond the square is a good canal town with a Gothic church, the Victory of 1573 remembered - Alkmaar was the first town to repel a Spanish siege - and the Bierkade.

What you actually see

• The Friday cheese market - carriers running wheels on barrows to the weighhouse.
• Price by handclap - the dealers settling in the old manner on the square.
• The Waag - a fourteenth-century chapel converted in 1582, with mechanical figures.
• The 1573 siege - the first Spanish siege in Holland to be beaten off.

When to go

Friday mornings, spring to autumn. A day.

Honest expectations

The market is a demonstration for visitors, not a trade, and it is very crowded - arrive early for a view. It runs only on Friday mornings in season. The rest of the town is quieter and worth the time.

Nearby

The North Holland dunes are west; Hoorn and Enkhuizen are east.