Gay North of the Netherlands

When you think of a Holland vacation, you're liable to think of wooden shoes, dikes, windmills, and brooding polder landscapes. Those things are all available in Noord-Holland, but there's more: there's art by the old masters, as well as a Dutch Museum for contemporary realistic art (and a unique one for stoves), there's also a living museum--a town devoted to Dutch life in the 17th and 18th centuries. And there's famouse cheese and cheese markets, of course.