Being a tourist and sightseeing in old villages is great, but is it good for the locals? Villagers living in 'Old Holland' near Amsterdam are tired of visitors and tour guides disturbing their peace. They have worked with tour companies to make rules for tourists. These include not photographing people without asking, not going into their gardens and not dropping litter. Tourism is booming and the number of tourists will rise by 50% in the next decade.
Old Holland looks like the past. There are windmills and traditional wooden houses. A local resident said the village of Zaanse Schans is like an open-air museum. However, he said: "One resident…opened his curtains in the morning and looked into the camera lenses of nine photographers." He added: "Visitors seem happy to knock on the wooden houses to see if it is real wood….That is not pleasant." He said tour buses were the noisiest.