
Introduction
Amsterdam is an unusual city in that it has all the advantages of a big city - culture, history, food, entertainment, good transport - with relatively few of the disadvantages: it is physically small, beautiful, relatively quiet, and largely thanks to the canals, has relatively little traffic.
Transport
Amsterdam has superb public transport facilities. There are many trams and good facilities for cyclists, like special bike lanes, and traffic lights for cyclists.
Trams
The best way to travel is by tram. They are frequent, fast and dependable. You can buy a ticket from the driver, the conductor at the back of the tram, or a machine in the middle of the tram, depending on the sort of tram it is.
Bicycles
The fastest way to travel is by bike. There are several addresses around town where you can hire (rent) a bike, for reasonable prices. Traditionally, Dutch bikes have no hand-brakes, but back-pedal brakes. If you think you can’t handle this, be sure to ask the hirer for a bike with hand-brakes.
When cycling, cross tram lines at a good angle to avoid getting your wheel caught in the rail. For obvious reasons, lock your bike to something solid when leaving it unattended.
When hiring a bike, you will be required to pay a deposit, and you should take some form of identification. Addresses:
Car hire
Driving in Amsterdam is not recommended. Even for longer distances it is far better to take a train.
Trains
Trains in the Netherlands are fast, frequent, comfortable, punctual and cheap; well, they were until they got privatised, when their punctuality started to suffer.
Walking
Central Amsterdam is very small: most distances are walkable, and walking is pleasurable, giving the best chance to appreciate the Amsterdam architecture. Beware of walking on bike paths, which are distinguished by their reddish colour: cyclists will show no mercy. Also take care when crossing roads, even at a green pedestrian light. Cyclists consider themselves pedestrians in Amsterdam, and so tend to ignore traffic lights.
Amsterdam is, as you may have noticed, structured as a half wheel. In the middle you have the old centre bounded by the canal called the Singel. It contains the Red-Light district around the Oude Kerk, the Nes theatre street, a quaint maze of small streets and quiet canals, and the Royal Palace at the Dam, with pedestrian shopping streets Nieuwendijk and Kalverstraat going north and south.
Surrounding the old centre, you have the three concentric ring canals Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht (it can help to note that they’re in alphabetic order). All four canals (with the Singel) are nice to walk along. The Herengracht is the grandest, especially along the ‘Golden Crescent’ to the east of the Leidsestraat, the Prinsengracht is perhaps the friendliest with its houseboats. The streets that connect the ring canals, especially the area called “The Nine Streets” in the section between the Brouwersgracht and the Leidsestraat shouldn’t be missed for their lovely individual shops.
Canal trips
It’s worth taking one of the canal boat tours to see Amsterdam from the water. They last about 90 minutes, and take you around the city and through the harbour. If you’re feeling energetic, you can hire a Canal Bike from one of the several points through the city, and choose your own route.
Language
Just about everyone speaks English in Amsterdam, and is proud of the fact. A common misconception is that Dutch is very close to German. In truth they are not mutually intelligible: Dutch people have to learn German at school, and in general they speak better English than German. German and Dutch are similar in the same sort of way that French and Italian are similar.
Money
The currency used in the Netherlands is the Euro expressed as EUR or €.
There are many places to change money in town. Post offices usually give the best rates.
Credit cards are not as widely accepted in the Netherlands as in many other lands, but it’s getting steadily better. Always enquire first if you want to pay by credit card.
Tipping
All prices in the Netherlands by law include tax and tips: the price you see is the price you pay. You don’t need to tip taxi drivers either.
Safety and Health
Amsterdam is a safe city, and there is nothing to fear from walking in any part of the city. Even in the red-light district but as in any large city you should beware of pick pockets. Don’t try to photograph the women in the red-light district though: that would be risky!
Eating and Drinking
It rains less in Rome, but Amsterdam has more cafés. So went the advert in the city once. Of all the things Amsterdam can offer a wide choice of food and drink.
Proeflokalen (tasting rooms)
In the 17th and 18th centuries Amsterdam was the centre of the European spice trade, and out of this grew a tradition of distilling ‘medicinal’ spirits, that developed into a full range of liqueurs. The proeflocalen specialise in these alcohols, and they have a disturbingly large range of traditional liqueurs that you will never have heard of.
That other sort of café
In the 17th Century Catholics and Protestants discovered that they were living side by side in Amsterdam, and in a very surprising development for the time, they didn’t slaughter each other. This seemed to work out well, so they developed a concept that they called ‘tolerance’, so that nowadays the Dutch don’t care if you are gay, foreign, or even if you eat mayonnaise with your fried potatoes (the latter of course is strictly speaking illegal, but the police turn a blind eye).
As you are probably aware, Amsterdam also has a policy of tolerating the sale and use of soft drugs. This activity is centred around so-called smoking cafes or “Coffeeshops” as the Dutch euphemistically call them. Whether you wish to avoid them or patronise them, they are easy to recognise: they are usually dark, have a characteristic smell, and tend to use words like free, high, happy, dreams, and space in the name of the cafe. They typically have a menu of the products they have on sale.
Places to See
Some of the major attractions in Amsterdam are the Anne Frank House, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum which allow you to book online and print your tickets out. This is worth doing, since it allows you to jump the queue for tickets and go straight in, but bear in mind that some only allocate a fixed number of tickets per day, so book early if you can.
The Anne Frank House, Prinsengracht 263 (Westerkerk), 09:00-19:00(summers 21:00), €7.50. The wartime hiding place of the young Jewish girl and her family, finally caught by the Nazis, made famous by Anne Frank’s diaries. Not to be missed. It’s better to go early, or late, to avoid the queues.
Begijnhof, Spui. Amsterdam has many ‘hofjes’, courtyards hidden away between houses. The Begijnhof is one of the largest, and well known, but also one of the more surprising: that such an oasis of peace can be so close to the bustling heart of the city. There is a doorway in the row of houses on the Spui that leads you there (if it is closed go right, around the corner to the entrance in the Gedempte Begijnensloot). It has a lovely English church (AD 1400) with pulpit panels designed by Mondriaan, and the oldest house in the city (1475), one of Amsterdam’s few surviving wooden houses. Turn left out of the Gedempte Begijnensloot entrance, and it leads you to the Amsterdam Historical Museum and its free gallery of old paintings of city guards in the style of the Nightwatch.
Heineken Brewery, Stadhouderskade 78; 10:00-18:00 (closed Mondays); €10. Used to be a brewery until a few years ago, now a museum and visitors’ centre. No unaccompanied children. No reservations. Free beer!
Museums
There are three major museums, the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk (modern art) and the Van Gogh. All three are situated around the Museumplein.
Rijksmuseum, Jan Luijkenstraat 1, 10:00-18:00; €9 (under 19 free). Large museum containing paintings by some of the Netherlands’ great 17th century painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Hals. The Nightwatch by Rembrandt is their prize piece. Contains many artefacts as well as paintings. (Currently being renovated, so some parts are closed.) There is also a small branch of the Rijksmuseum at Schiphol airport.
Van Gogh, Paulus Potterstraat 7, 10:00-18:00 (Friday 22:00); €10. Surprisingly spacious, dedicated to Van Gogh and his contemporaries.
There are many other museums, too many to list here. Interesting ones include:
Rembrandt’s House, Jodenbreestraat 4 (Waterlooplein), 10:00(Sunday 11:00)-17:00, €7.50. The 17th century house where Rembrandt lived and worked, restored to its former state. Of particular interest is the ability to buy etches made from copies of Rembrandt’s original plates, at quite reasonable prices (about €35).
Trips outside the city
In tulip season (late March to mid-to-late May) flower lovers can take a coach trip to Keukenhof, huge gardens dedicated to tulips.
Not far from Amsterdam, in the former Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer) is Marken, an island now joined to the mainland by a land bridge. It still has many wooden houses, and you can still see people wearing local costume, not just for tourists. You should at least visit the harbour. There are organised coach tours, but for much less money you can take bus 111 from Central Station (it takes about 45 minute).