With the right investment, Amsterdam delivers

I find Amsterdam a hard city to love.

Its dominant images seem to be of red light districts and "coffee" shops: haggard prostitutes displaying themselves behind plate glass, racks of semi-pornographic post cards, glassy-eyed smokers, shop windows of hash seeds and drug smoking equipment, the choking stench of marijuana pouring on to the streets as groups of drunken lads on stag weekends elbow you aside. Its town square is a gray monstrosity of modern buildings, a brutalist national memorial, tacky living statues dressed as Star Wars characters and a palace that demonstrates how Baroque architecture becomes stodgy and overbearing without a light touch. Add to this the fact that the weather when I'm here always seems to be overcast, windy and rainy, and you understand my reticence. Amsterdam is just not anywhere I've ever gotten excited about visiting.

Thus is was with deep ambivalence that I accepted Marcus Evans' invitation to speak at a telecoms branding seminar here. It was good to be out of the office at someone else's expense, great to be in a session of fellow professionals exchanging ideas ... but in Amsterdam? I almost turned down the offer.

There's one big difference since the last time I visited, however. I now have a colleague who lives here, and invited me to stay with her and experience the local Amsterdam. The native touch went a long way towards redeeming the city for me. Stay out of the biggest of the tourist areas, arrange your schedule carefully to take in the highlights, take long walks in residential neighbourhoods, eat at local places, dress warm and carry a good umbrella. Take this approach, add in some evenings with cosmopolitan locals, and Amsterdam may start to earn its moniker of the "Venice of the North".

That description comes from the canals, of course, but also from the circumstances that built them. Both towns were at the heart of global commercial empires. Both filled with rich merchants who built magnificent townhouses beside their warehouses along those working waterways. The most beautiful part of Amsterdam is the section where you can see this, and it's mostly still residential. Bounded by the Herengracht canal to the East, the Prinsengracht to the West, the Brouwersgracht to the North and a big street called the Vijzelstraat to the Southeast, this district offers all the charming arched bridges, meandering canal boats and stately homes you could desire. There are a few big tourist sites here, most notably the Anne Frank house, but it's primarily a quiet district with good architecture.

Amsterdam's golden age was the 17th century, when the Dutch East and West India organisations became the world's first stock-owned companies, Dutch merchantmen moved goods around the world and New York was a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam. It's worth remembering that if it weren't for a few accidents of history, it would have been the Dutch rather than the English Empire that shaped the modern Western World. (For a great book on the Golden Age, see Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches.) The houses built by these masters of the universe were tall and narrow due to the limited space in the city, and taxation by width of house frontage, but no less opulent for their constraints. Their most unique features are their gables and cornices, the fanciful and wildly diverse decoration at the top of each. Even the poshest houses needed a winch to haul goods and furniture up from the street, and it's great fun to spot the ways architects built these into their motifs. Another fun element is the use of house signs. Street numbers came late to Amsterdam; most houses are still marked with a plaque denoting the house name or occupation of the people who once lived there.

Though traditional Dutch architecture dominates in this area, there's plenty of variety. French and Italian Renaissance, Gothic, neoclassical, art nouveau and art deco all make appearances on top of the standard canal house bones. This area is also filled with some excellent local restaurants (on which more to come in anther blog) and fashionable little shops. When it comes to clothing and accessories, Amsterdam has a design sensibility fresher, bolder and far more interesting than London's, at more reasonable prices. Women actually seem to wear colours here. I am in recession mode at the moment, but it did occur to me that a clothes and shoe shopping trip to Amsterdam at some future date wouldn't be a bad idea.

Another great way to see the city is by canal boat tour. Indeed, as in Venice I'd suggest that from the water is the only way to get a proper appreciation of the spirit of the place. We went with the Blue Boat Company, departing from Stadhouderskade 30 near the Rijksmuseum and the American Hotel. (See www.blueboat.nl) My host has been on many of these and says this one's the best, thanks to its 75 minute duration and its expansive loop around the city. This includes a sail across the harbour, where you can get a sense of the industrial and shipping heritage. As with so many cities, much of the harbour front is being renovated and it's here that you can find bold modern architecture and trendy new entertainment areas.

Besides random wandering and architectural appreciation, my two personal "must sees" in Amsterdam are the flower market and the Rijksmuseum.

The Bloemenmarkt, stretching along the Singel canal, is actually the last of Amsterdam's floating markets. This was once a common sight, as local traders loaded up their boats and sailed into the big city to sell their wares. Now the flower stalls are fixed and when walking along the canal you'd never know the back of the shop was sitting on water, but the awareness of it adds a bit of appreciation. I love it here, however, because Amsterdam isn't a particularly green city. That limited space means that this city, despite anchoring a country famous for flower production, is a relentlessly urban procession of brick and stone with a few trees to soften the view. The bloemenmarkt brings the bulb fields to the city, offering serried ranks of cut flowers and magnificent deals on bulbs for all seasons, including some unique colours and varieties. The quality here is fantastic; I was salivating over the largest peony tubers I've ever seen, but realised I had nowhere to put the resulting plant. The deals are also good. Even with the weak pound, the 40 tulip bulbs I got for 10 euro is well below what I would pay at my own garden centre. (A note for Americans. Sadly, most of this cannot be brought into the States. You have to make special arrangements and buy from people who can package for shipping through customs. So it's possible, but your range is more limited and it is, of course, more expensive.)

Finally, the Rijksmuseum. As anywhere else in the world, art follows money and global empires leave great museums as their legacy. The Rijksmuseum is a blockbuster, crammed full of all the most famous Northern European art with generous side helpings of works from other regions and the detritus of empire. A mostly closed blockbuster, however. In desperate need of major works, the Dutch took the radical decision to shut the main building down for more than five years, promising a state-of-the-art museum within the 19th century shell when it reopens at the turn of 2012-13.

In the mean time, they've collected all the masterpieces from the Golden Age (which is, generally, what tourists want to see) in a handful of galleries at the back of the building. The rest of the collection is either in storage or on loan. This might be disastrous for an art lover on a once-in-a-lifetime visit, but if you're here on a business trip with a stolen hour or two, it's a blessing. Everything you want to see, conveniently grouped together with an informative audio tour for 5 euro.

There's the expected room of Rembrandts (always a bit dark and broody for me) and the happy and prosperous citizens captured by the magic of Frans Hals (the artist I'd resurrect to do my own portrait). There's a whole room of blue and white Delft ware, fascinating objects brought back from the East Indies, a procession of remarkably detailed still lives and flower paintings and atmospheric Dutch landscapes. There are several of those classically Dutch group portraits of the merry cavaliers showing off their prosperity, including Rembrandt's famous Night Watch. And there are a handful of Vermeers, breathtaking in their still, quiet beauty.

This is a great museum. Not just because of its collection, but because of its management. The thought that's gone into this temporary space is fantastic. The galleries are beautiful, complementary to the art and easy to move through. They have three different audio guides, from straight art historical to fun and a bit funky to the children's version. The gift shop is crammed with unusual gift items. They even have a branch at the airport; not just the shop, but a gallery with rotating exhibitions. And the web site is fantastic. If you want to see the exhibition I just saw, simply head to www.rijksmuseum.nl and you can call up a 360 degree video sweep of each gallery. If I don't get back sooner, I know I will plan a major trip to Amsterdam when the Rijksmuseum re-opens. Given how clever they've been with their limited resources, I can't wait to see what they're going to do with the whole collection.