Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, and one of the best things you can do is simply to walk around the different areas and take in your surroundings.

As far as actual sights are concerned the Royal Palace is a good place to start. The inside realy does beat the outside, although public access is restricted to such a small area you'll probably think the entrance fee was slightly steep. The Atlas sculpture in the main hall there is really worth seeing, as are the circular maps charting Dutch influence at the time that adorn the floor.

We loved everything, but the best advice I can give is to just wonder around - your 100% sure to find something interesting!

Quick Tips:

1. Book your hotel before you go to avoid paniky calls from the airport or lugging your bags around town. 2. Try and pick up the guide to the city put out by the American comedians 'Boom Chicago' - it's more up to date than the guide books, and good for navigating restuarants, sights, even coffeeshops and strip bars (if that's your thing!).

Best Way To Get Around:

Walk, walk and walk. It's the best way to see any city! The taxi from the airport was a complete rip off (€50) - take the train, it's easy, quick, and efficient. We avoided taxis completely after that! We took a canal tour (unfortunatly I've forgotten the name of the company, but it leaves from Langbrugsteeg) which was good (for the view) but was a recorded tour. We just jumped on the first one we saw (like true tourists...) and the captain was funny, interjecting the rather dry commentary.

We stayed in this hotel the first night we arrived: at the airport there resources to find city hotels (and free phone calls to them) and we found this place after MANY calls (i.e. my advice is to book before you go!). The hotel is right by the Liedseplien, in the heart of the city (but also in the most touristy bit). The atmosphere of the hotel was really nice: very homey, especially at breakfast for some reason! The room was pretty small though, and basic (but comfortable). It seemed a little expensive for the quality of hotel but still had a charm all of its own. It is right on a canal up winding stairs with simply cosy decor.

My only reservation in fully recommending this hotel is that the facilities tend towards the basic (more so than you would generally expect for the price you pay). There wasn't a door between our bathroom and bedroom, only a shower curtain. Also the television broke (although the nice people in reception gave us a discount because of this). The room was also small. Bearing this in mind, the facilities were clean and comfortable. We turned up in the middle of the early morning, perhaps explaining the faults in our room (we also took the last room). Overall the nice atmosphere, with its distinctive personality (so often lacking in more slick hotels) more than made up for this. It provided a good base from which we found a better hotel.

This is a luxury hotel and no doubt about it - it has a price tag to match. Gigantic rooms, luxury, modern decor, great service and free bottled water everyday! The whole experience was more than comfortable. The room was extremely modern (no chintz!), the service slick. The hotel corridors were decorated with posters of (I would guess) the '20s advertising cigarettes, movies, etc. The beautiful staircase that winds around the lifts is interrupted on every floor with classy maritime stained glass.

The facilities are good (internet available, but at a ridiculously high cost compared to the hundreds of internet cafes (or more often coffee shops) scattered around the city. We got breakfast only for one morning, as it included more than you could possibly eat and the extras weren't so hot (especially the eggs). It came in a bit steep at about €30 for two! You get TV (BBC1+2, MTV, CNN and a host of other channels if you want to keep up with the home news) as well.

We stayed here for most of the time - we had one night next door at the Hotel Maas, which, although not comparible in service and luxury, had a greater personality.

This hotel has all the impersonality of any chain hotel (it is owned by the US chain Inter-Continental) but with some exceptions. It is housed in a beautiful building including the gorgeous art deco Cafe Americain which is essentially a vast art deco hall (with some great older looking stained glass) serving great hot chocolate! The building overshadows its corner of the Leidseplein, and the Cafe is worth visiting even if you don't stay for the night. The Bar American is something of a let down in comparison, situated in a green canvass tent attatched to the hotel. None the less the service is impeccable (as you would expect at the price). We called at the last minute and while the price of our room (€280/night) was certainly steep it was half the rake rate for the room we were in (thus we had a lot of room).

Also a nice, central (but touristy) location.

This is a truely special vegetarian dining experience. The flavours were subtle (not to mention delicious), and the menu was varied and interesting. We both had the thalis - my boyfriend the Indian, I had the middle eastern thali.

Generally one of the nicest meals we'd ever had in a purely vegetarian restaurant. Go here despite the bad press of veggie restaurants in this town!

Wonder round the surrounding streets for interesting shops, houses, and a generally more lived in feel than the tourist circuit will give you.

We picked up on this comedy act through the guide to Amsterdam's many charms they write (and leave free in hotels, bars, etc). It was funny and more accurate than any of the guide books we brought with us so we went for it. For a start, we went for the pre-show dinner, served in your seats in the theatre. The food was OK, but with not many vegetarian options to say the least! We thought the main veggie meal was pretty bland but the salad was good.

The act itself is a combination of improv and planned sketches: both of which were very funny. It's an audience participation thing (with a few audience members picked out for torture!) so underlying the laughs is a sort of cold fear if you're not into that kind of thing!

The only warning I will give is that the show seems to be a sort of unofficial ex-pat/visiting Americans meeting place (i.e. 98% of people there were American). Overall a really good night out.

This is a sort of Amsterdamish heaven for punks/skaters. The music (vinyl and CD) is great, with a mix of mainstream punk, old school punk and metal and anything else with load guitars (from Bad Brains to the Offspring via Le Tigre and KISS)! I'm not really an expert on skating stuff, but they had some boards with some cool pictures on them ;)

The clothes here are an eclectic mix (kind of like the music) which works quite well. A mixture of the standard alternative T-shirts (Porn Star stuff, etc), some more interesting things for girls and boys including nice quality mens shirts with more interesting things printed on them. It's sort of strange though, because in amoungst this are brands that are pretty ubiquitous (in the UK anyway) and mainstream (Lonsdale jumpers, Ben Sherman shirts etc), but picked for looks rather than labels, so it sort of works.

This museum is clearly meant to capitalise on the 'seedy' side of Amsterdam's reputation (it's right opposite the red light district). It's a pretty silly and tacky musuem in many ways. It's more of a museum of novelty items than sex (wax work men with trench coats which open up when you walk near them and display their 'goods' etc). However, it's actually pretty funny. Everyone likes a sex joke after all... Also, if you consider this is the sort of thing the British library won't let you see unless you're a bespectacled, respectable scholar, it takes on a sort of charm.

The exhibits here range from the silly to the lurid, but don't go expecting to be titilated, go expecting to have a photo taken of you next to a giant penis!

This is partly a good place to go just to see the range of expressions on the faces of the other museum visitors. From the painful (daughter brought along by parents) to the hilarious (the elderly queuing up to have their picture taken next to said giant penis) it is good.

This museum is generally dismissed in the guidebooks (the ones we read anyway), and this is unfortunate. It does lean towards the tacky, yet it does have some interesting exhibits if you get away from the wax works, particularly the vintage pornography.

This museum is the Netherland's national museum and contains a varied (and huge) collection of pre-1850 Dutch art. It contains some of the most famous Dutch paintings in the world (including the Nightwatchman) which are clearly signposted to help you out if you are only intending to see these one or two things! In fact, wandering around the museum will reveal more interesting art than these few examples. Without any previous interest in Dutch art, I still enjoyed myself.

This is really a mainstream tourist destination (as evidenced by the huge number of pyramid poster tubes with 'Rijksmuseum' written on them that you'll see around the city). However, it holds this appeal because it is a classy art collection, in a great building.

Depending on your point of view, this mall is either the commercial rape of a glorious building, or the living use of a public space. Whatever your opinion, a walk around it is a really interesting experience (even if it is not matched by the prosiac brand name retailers that inhabit this building).

There is nothing much to recommend actually shopping here - unless you're after a pair of levis you could get anywhere! There are some Finnish design stores - but you can get this stuff anywhere.

Inside and out this is yet another example of what a deliciously pretty city Amsterdam is - even the shopping malls are nice!

Leidseplein is the tourist centre of Amsterdam, so you will no doubt end up here: either to stay in one of the hotels, or just by coming across it in your exploration of the city. We stayed around here, and found it had its benefits as well as its drawbacks.

The square is surrounded on all sides by a plethora of bars, coffeeshops, cafes and restaurants. My advice if you are considering eating here is just don't: every meal we had in the area was terrible. The restaurants all seem to display 'tourist' menus, and cater for louty British men and women (there is even a British 'Sports Bar').

Despite this, this area is an interesting place to visit. It has a surreal unplanted (at least when we were there) triangular park, covered in iron lizards (see picture below!) which we could only guess at the purpose of! A VVV tourist office is usefully situated at the beginning of Leisestraat. It is central, busy, lively, and interesting.

Walk up Leidsestraat towards the centre of Amsterdam (which fans out from the central point of the aptly named Central station). This street is a shopping street, generally full of familiar brand stores. It has a 'night shop' called 'Big Bananas' where we bought gigantic, delicious strawberries. We went to the coffeeshop 'Rookies' on Leidsewarsstraat which 'served' good weed in a bar with an atmosphere approximating a London pub, but we steered clear of the toursity, offputting Bulldog.

Leidseplein is in the Grachengordel South district. Walking east along Prinsengracht, Kerkstraat, or Keizersgracht, where they intersect with Leisestraat, is interesting, as the touristy places dry up after a few blocks and leave a scattering of good restaurants and bars. If you walk far enough along Kerkstraat you will come to the Punk shop that I reviewed elsewhere in this journal. Turn right down Utrechsestraat to find the vegetarian restaurant Golden Temple, which I have also reviewed.