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A brick canal house reflected in an Amsterdam canal, with a bridge and bicycles.

A canal house · Amsterdam

Places/Netherlands

North Holland

Amsterdam

A canal city that is smaller than its reputation and sterner about bicycles than visitors expect.

Amsterdam is a working city that happens to be pretty from a bridge. The centre is genuinely walkable. It is also a place where people live above the postcard, and the bicycle lane is not a suggestion.

Give it the nights, then leave it for a day — Haarlem, Delft, or a shorter hop — rather than adding Brussels out of guilt.

See

  • The Rijksmuseum

    The seventeenth-century rooms if you must choose. Book the slot. It explains the country better than a canal boat with a loudspeaker.

  • A canal that is not the main ring

    Walk the Jordaan in the morning. The bridges are the same idea and the crowd is thinner.

  • A day in Haarlem or Delft

    Half an hour by train. A church, a square, a proper lunch, and back before dinner. This is the Netherlands at a human scale.

  • The harbour edge

    Behind the station the city opens onto water that is still a port. Walk it once so the canals are not your only idea of the place.

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