If you look at a topographical map of The Netherlands, likely one of the most boring such maps in the world, you'd see that much of the western part of the country is slightly below mean sea level, most of the rest of the country is only the slightest bit above sea level, there’s some elevated land and in Limburg Province between Belgium and Germany, and then there’s some low hills in the central part of the country. This region is known as Hoge Veluwe and actually includes some slightly hilly country. The area consists of sandy and infertile soil, so was cleared for cropland but reverted to moors and dunes used for grazing when crops did poorly.

The wealthy Kroller-Muller family owned a large estate in the area which they donated to the Dutch nation to become Hoge-Veluwe National Park . As far as national parks of the world go, this one’s quite tiny and very managed (just like the Netherlands in general in the scheme of things). It’s managed, though, to preserve the open spaces and heath from becoming completely overgrown by forest and for the wildlife that lives there. That charismatic megafauna consists of Red Deer, Roe Deer, and Wild Boar and introduced Chamois and Mouflon from mountainous regions of the Alps, Pyrenees, and Sardinia. It’s not quite the Serengeti, but I did get to see three of those five species on my drive through the park. I guess the best way to see the park, like maybe the best way to see the Netherlands, is on a bike, since its crossed by an extensive system of trails.

Het Loo Palace and the Kroller-Muller Museum were my top reasons for including eastern Netherlands on my itinerary and renting a car, but my guidebook mentioned numerous other places of varying levels of interestingness to see on a trip through the region. I decided to stop in Zutphen, a well-preserved medieval town along the Ijssel River a short distance east of Apeldoorn and Hoge-Veluwe. It’s a beautiful town, but none of the sights were open on the April weekday morning of my visit. There’s something about it, though, that seems just a little more German or Belgian than places closer to the coast in what’s officially Holland seem, still the Netherlands but not as uniquely Dutch in atmosphere.