Veere

Put quite simply, Veere is one of the prettiest towns in the Netherlands, and well worth a stop to explore its quiet streets and admire its elegant architecture. Now a village of 2,000, it was 10 times that size in the 16th century. Back then the town was an important seaport, with a busy trade in wool, linen, and salt. It is now the principal sailing port of the Veerse Meer (Veerse Lake, at 26 km [16 miles] long one of the largest in the Netherlands), created when they closed off the estuary with a dike completed in 1961. When the town was no longer a seaport, and found itself separated from the sea, it reinvented itself to become a major water-sports center in which every form of aquatic activity is practiced.