Leiden, Holland

Travel Blog  •  Ben Keene  •  11.22.06 | 1:51 PM ET

Coordinates: 52 9 N 4 30 E
Population: 118,702 (2004 est.)
imageA symbol as much as it is a supper, the feast of Thanksgiving held in the U.S. the fourth Thursday in November first combined North American foodstuffs with European recipes and cooking methods. Actual evidence of any kind of festival in the fall of 1621 is scant, yet we know that if a meal of mythic proportions did take place at Plimoth Plantation, it would have been prepared by a group of Separatists who had fled religious persecution in England. Before reaching present-day Massachusetts, however, these British transplants spent roughly 10 years in Leiden, Holland—a settlement whose origins can be traced to the Roman Empire. Leiden is also the site of the oldest university in the Netherlands, a school that had already been established by the time the Pilgrims turned up in 1609. Visitors to the City of Refugees today will find two small museums dedicated to the Pilgrims and the brief period they spent among these narrow Dutch canals and alleyways.

—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.

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Ben Keene has appeared on National Public Radio, Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio as well as other nationally syndicated programs to discuss geographic literacy and his work updating a bestselling world atlas. Formerly a touring musician, he has written for Transitions Abroad and inTravel.


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