It's ringed by miles of characterless apartment buildings and office parks, but its city centre is a beautifully preserved architectural gem. It's a casual city in attitudes and clothes, yet we found ourselves woefully underdressed amongst an elegant and formal classical music audience. Its tourist attractions go from the academic highs of some of the world's best museums to the lowbrow depths of the Red Light district and marijuana tourism. During the week, it's a quiet place filled with business people and older, cultural tourists. By Friday night it's throbbing with packs of young people … often loud, drunk and in ridiculous costume … out to have a good time. It's a city that, as a search on previous blog entries will prove, I didn't used to like much. But it's grown on me.
My excuse for travel, as my last article stated, was primarily to visit Keukenhof gardens. But Amsterdam and environs are so compact and convenient that we seemed to pack a week's worth of sightseeing into four days, with plenty of stops for rejuvenation. Thus, in addition to that garden, we managed three museums, one concert, two city centre tours, a ramble along a beach and six restaurants worth mentioning. In three nights and four full days.
The way to get acclimated in Amsterdam is a canal boat cruise, because almost everything you want to see is either on the harbour, the river Amstel, or the ring of four canals that circle the historic city centre. The tour I took last time was better value with more detailed commentary, but it was a hike across town to pick it up. Instead we opted for the Holland International 100 Highlights tour, which left regularly from in front of the train station. An hour's trip cost euro15 (though we had a euro3 coupon from our hotel) and takes you past all the key sights. The commentary is pretty basic, necessitated by the fact that the English is followed by French, Dutch, Russian and Chinese. That doesn't give the speaker much time before what you're looking at glides by. But it does the job.
The cruise was so convenient because we were staying just a few hundred yards down a main road from the station, at the MGallery Convent Hotel. It's hard to beat for placement. Dam Square is a bit further along, the street is filled with restaurants and the tram outside cuts across town to the museum district. A disappointment, however, in decor and comfort. MGallery is the flagship brand of the Accor chain, a set of hotels that are supposed to be distinguished by their housing in distinctive, historic properties. The Amsterdam location is much celebrated for its convent past, but it turns out that was more than a century ago and the building had been a newspaper office since. No distinctive architectural features, just a worn bust of a nun in a low-ceilinged, pokey lobby. Our room was large but lacked comfort, thanks to a lumpy mattress, sagging chair and ineffectual heating and air conditioning. As we'd cashed in Accor Club points for our stay we could hardly complain, but I wouldn't be quick to return for any reason other than the location.
I might not have slept well, but there's plenty about Amsterdam to make sightseeing a pleasure. The top three factors are:
- Cheap transport. I mentioned the airport train above. An hour on buses or trams costs less than euro3. A round-trip to Den Haag, 38 miles away, was 11. (Compare that to my local line to London, where 48 miles in an hour costs almost triple that, you may not get a seat and even if you do, it won't be nearly as comfortable.) Tickets for events at the Concertgebouw even come with free public transport for two hours on either side of the concert. Although this benefit is set to end in a cost cut next year. Still, it's all very civilised.
- Near-ubiquitous free WiFi. Another area where the Netherlands is miles ahead of the UK. There was free wifi on the train to and from the airport and Den Haag (something else I don't get from Southwest Trains!), and on the bus to and from Keukenhof. Most tourist attractions and restaurants offer it, as did our hotel from public areas through individual rooms. I was online more, for free, than I am using my paid-for provider's service in London. And what perfect PR sense this makes, as tourists fuelled by connections tweet their discoveries and update review sites.
- Abundant cafes. Amsterdam, like Paris, is flush with places in which to linger and watch the world go by. Depending on the time of day, you might punctuate your stop with coffee and some Dutch apple cake, or a beer and bitterbollen. The pastry is a local speciality and is a distinct take on deep dish apple pie that must be tried. Less remembered is that this is a great place to drink beer. Near neighbour to the renowned brewers of Belgium, and savvy hands at the process themselves, even humble spots tend to have a variety of beers on tap, a much broader range in bottles and servers who know their list and can make recommendations. The traditional accompaniment are balls of beef thickened with a stiff gravy, then coated with bread crumbs, fried and served with mustard. Bitterballen are close cousins to Spanish croquetas, leading us to ponder if their development was related (the Netherlands was part of the Spanish empire, after all) and, if so, which came first.
Those frequent pit stops were the secret to seeing so much. Sadly, a lingering after-effect of my cancer treatment is weakened legs. I just can't walk like I used to. The frequent rests recharged my batteries, while inevitably providing free wifi to plan what we were doing next. Details of those further adventures to come.
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