North Holland Peninsula
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Cities
- — the cheese market and picturesque historic centre
- - a typical West Frisian rural community, on the dike
- — artist village at the beach and the Schoorlse Duinen
- — the Museum Broeker Veiling is notably interesting
- — has a nice beach, the lake of Alkmaar-Uitgeest and the dunes
- — home to the country's main naval base and the ferry to Texel
- — historic town with the Zuiderzeemuseum, a large open-air museum about the Netherlands in the period 1850-1950
- — built around a white church, this town expanded rapidly due to an influx of inhabitants from Amsterdam
- — stunning historic centre with a cozy atmosphere
- — small village that has a rich history with many old buildings, castles and monuments
- — historic town centre and the Schager Wiel nature area
Definition
The northern Dutch Peninsula can be divided in three regions. The most urbanized region is Groot Alkmaar(Greater Alkmaar) with about 308,000 inhabitants. It is a weakly defined region with no definitive name and it overlaps with other regions. Some proposed names for this region include West-Friesland-West and North-Kennemerland, although only a small part of the region actually forms a part of West-Friesland and it has no connection with the historical county of Kennemerland.
West-Friesland is a culturally distinct area encircled by the Westfriese Omringdijk (West Frisian ring dyke). The West Frisian dialect belongs to the Hollandic dialect group of the Dutch language, but it is related to the West Frisian language as spoken in the province of Friesland. North of it is the "Kop van Noord-Holland" (the head of North Holland), a sparse region outside of the ring dyke where West Frisian is also spoken. The island of Texel is culturally a part of this region, but geographically an island in the Wadden Sea.
Talk
The Hollandic Dutch dialect of West Frisian is spoken in West Friesland and the head of North-Holland. This is not to be confused with the language of West Frisian as spoken in the province of Friesland, even though both languages are related to each other.