It's great being tourist and leisurely wandering around old towns and villages seeing sites, but is it such thrill for local residents? Villagers living in area known as 'Old Holland' outside of Amsterdam have had enough of visitors traipsing around and of tour guides with megaphones disturbing their peace. They have got together with local tour companies to create rules of conduct for tourists. rules include not photographing residents without permission, not strolling into their gardens and not dropping litter. new code of conduct is attempt to deal with growing popularity of region. Tourism is booming and the number of tourists is expected to rise by 50 per cent in next decade.
Old Holland is idyllic area that matches people's image of Dutch life from slower, bygone age. There are windmills everywhere and locals live in beautifully preserved, traditional wooden houses. Local resident Peter-Jan van Steenbergen told Holland's Het Parool newspaper that village of Zaanse Schans is like open-air museum. He said: "I talked to one resident who opened his curtains in morning and looked into camera lenses of nine amateur photographers." He added: " visitors seem happy to knock on wooden houses to see if it is real wood. If you are resident of that house, that is not pleasant, of course." He said busloads of tourists were biggest nuisance.
