Amsterdam Weekend

People come to Amsterdam for all kinds of reasons: to see paintings and to get stoned, to admire the 18th century canal houses and to see the best examples of the modernist style, to eat Indonesian food and to sample the dubious delights of the Red Light District.

Many days are needed to see everything – but some things are unmissable for anybody who wants to get the taste of the city in all its variety: thus the top ten things to see and do in Amsterdam, in no particular order, and probably more suited to a slightly more mature kind of visitor than a member of a 20-something stag or hen party.

1) Walk the Grachtengordel: a sequence of five canals that extend from Brouwersgracht to the River Amstel in a "belt of canals" or Grachtengordel.. This is how Amsterdam is often imagined and this how – surprisingly, as the reality is often different from the images – it really looks like. It's a strikingly attractive townscape, with grey-green canals overlooked by rows of beautiful canal houses, mostly dating to 17th and 18th centuries. The three main canals are Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht , and the picturesque canal-land stretches to hip area of Jordaan, west of the very centre.

2) Still on the aquatic note, take a canal boat tour (or use it as a means of transportation combining practical with the pleasurable). Canal Bus is the best, offering three routes through three different parts of the city. If you already covered the south and the west as per previous tip, take the blue line that will take you to the eastern docks and the heart of maritime Amsterdam. Tickets cost 20 euro and allow for unlimited usage for 24 hours.

3) See some art: Holland produced some of the best known and most influential painters of the Western world, and Amsterdam has a fantastic selection of museums devoted to art ancient and modern. Van Gogh Museum, Rijksmuseum (with Rembrandt and Vermeer) and the Stedelijk (with Mondrian) are the most obvious – for a good reason – picks.

4) Eat Indonesian food. The most popular "exotic" cuisines come from the former colonies in all countries that had those, and Holland had Indonesia with its spice trade. The colony is no more, but Amsterdam has a wonderful selection of Indonesian restaurants. Ask for a rijsttafel – a sample menu vaguely reminiscent of Southern European meze of tapas.

5) See some modernist and newer architecture, for example 1920 de Klerk's Het Schip housing complex (now a museum) or the science centre Nemo and nearby ARCAM building. If you are particularly interested, set out to Java Island to see a contemporary take on the canal house, or the almost brutalist housing complex The Whale.

6) Have a beer or a cup of coffee and an apple tart with cream in one of Amsterdam's "brown cafes" (cafe bruin) – they are as much pubs as cafes, actually, and provide the most traditional, cosy and inviting place for a quiet break in a touring schedule. A beer will likely set you back about 4-5 euro, so it's not a cheap past-time.

7) Have a walk through the Red Light District: not to sample the wares on offer, but to see what is, after all, a tourist attraction in itself. Still sleazy and seedy, despite great inroads made for the working rights of the working girls, and perhaps not a place to hang around for long, but worth a stroll in the early hours of the evening even if just to say you have been there and done that.

8) Visit the Resistance Museum: it's more better than the slightly overrated Anne Frank House and presents the story of the Dutch people during the Second World War in an admirably clear, informative and moving display combining historical facts and personal accounts: and the fate of the Dutch Jews is extensively covered too.

9) Walk along the Flower Market by the Singel canal: you can admire the countless varieties of the tulips (and few others) and fulfil all your souvenir and tourist tat buying needs here as the stalls and shops sell bulbs, porcelain clogs and various windmill-decorated items galore.

10) Have a peek into a coffee shop. Amsterdam is unique and well known in that allows licensed and legal use of cannabis. Even if you have no intentions of using any hash or marijuana, a look at one of those establishments (with menus listing the wares by name, origin and price) which for many -especially young - visitors are the main draw of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam has over 50 museums, covering everything from Van Gogh to prostitution, Rembrandt to beer, diamonds to Anne Frank, modern art to marijuana. You are not likely to want - or be able to - visit all or even most of them during your visit, but you are likely to find something of interest in the sheer variety of them all: below is a pick of the best we visited.


1) Van Gogh Museum houses a huge permanent collection of his work in chronological order, a small gallery of his contemporaries and changeable temporary exhibitions on a particular theme, location or period. It's beautifully laid out and with plenty of information that sheds light not only on Van Gogh's development as an artist, but his whole life and the art world of his time. It's busy (with frequent queues) and expensive (15 euro) but well worth visiting.

2) Rijksmuseum is at the time of writing undergoing an extensive refurbishment which is expected to last until at least 2012, but it still displays a selection of the most known, loved and interesting works in an exhibition entitled "The Masterpieces" and for this exhibition alone should be visited by anybody with the scantiest interest in art. Some truly remarkable work is displayed here, from the eponymous Night Watch and other (and arguably, better) Rembrandts to Franz Hals to wonderfully luminous Vermeers.

3) Stedelijk is the must-see museum for modern and contemporary art: due to re-open in renovated premises in 2010, the musuem still maintains presence at a selection of temporary venues around Amsterdam. The collection features cutting edge new artists as well as a works from Monet, Cezanne, and of course a great showing for Mondrian.

4) Dutch Resistance Museum has been chosen as the best historical museum of the Netherlands, and rightly so: it recounts the story not just of the resistance, but of the whole German occupation of the Netherlands in Word War 2. What was the national response? How was the resistance started? Who resisted and why? The displays are incredibly well presented, mixing historical fact, social background and personal stories of real people. A lot of the info is provided in English and the whole is compelling and very enlightening. Even if you are not particularly interested in the WW2 or history, it's still very worth visiting.

5) The Willet-Holthuysen Museum is a houses of the Amsterdam rich merchant and allows for a peek into the life of those who used to inhabit those magnificent canal houses in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the time of our visit an exhibition on fans was also held there!

6) Anne Frank's House combines the detailed presentation about the fate of the teenage diarist and her family with more general information about the Holocaust in the Netherlands, and although initial impression might be of a slightly undignified tourist trap, the actual result is dignified, moving and informative: the enormity of the Jews' extermination doesn't is shown through the focus on an individual case but rarely if even becomes sentimental or simplistic.


There are many more - from the world-class photography centre FOAM to the museum of Hash, Hemp and Marijuana to Historical Museum of Amsterdam to Prostitution Information Centre to one devoted to the local football club Ajax to Heineken Experience to Museum of the Tropic, plus numerous small and medium exhibitions and displays catering for a huge variety of interests and tastes, Amsterdam museums have a lot to offer and every visitor should find one - and probably more - that will capture his attention and imagination.

I certainly want to go back and see some more.

This Rough Guide is as comprehensive, up to date and well researched as most if not all Rough Guides seem to be. I have used numerous examples of their guides and I found them to be among the best if not the best ones there are. They do seem to have moved upmarket a bit since I first started to use them in the early 90s - but they still provide the best balance in descriptions covering practicalities, context, history, sightseeing, entertainment, drinking, clubbing and even (in Amsterdam at least) dope smoking.

The introduction is to the usual Rough Guide standards, with all general info a traveller to the Netherlands in general, and to Amsterdam in particular might wish to have.

The main guide section, which provides descriptions of the city and its sights is excellent. Amsterdam is divided into several naturally separating chunks and the guide provides a description and historical background to the areas, takes the reader on a walk throughout each of them and informs in fair depth on all significant and many minor sights and attractions.

As most Rough Guides are, and as all good guides should be, this one is opinionated and doesn't avoid giving recommendation nor damning with faint praise when necessary.

In addition to the general, the guide has good sections for visitors with children and an extensive section devoted to gay Amsterdam (though Amsterdam being Amsterdam, this separation perhaps wasn't even necessary).

We used this volume during our visit in February 2009, and I can't think of one part or entry that I would disagree with. Even the practicalities of the museum closures were all covered and up to date, although all prices were already slightly higher (but that is to be expected). The colour maps were incredibly useful.

The only reason I can't possibly give it full five stars and I was even contemplating giving three is the layout. The whole book is divided into sections within sections within sections.

And thus, we have a sightseeing section, accounted for above, and very sensibly, divided into city districts. Then we have accommodation section, and that is also divided into districts. So far, not so bad. After all, accommodation is organised once or twice, the over and done with, while sightseeing is an ongoing process. There is nothing wrong with separating the two.

But then we listings and reviews for restaurants, bars and cafs. And each of those categories is GIVEN ITS OWN SECTION. And each of those is separated into districts. This was really, really impractical, especially as (at least during the day) the difference between restaurant, caf or bar is not that great for practical purposes. In order to find a place to eat lunch or snack or stop for a coffee, I had to first check the bars for a given district, then skip over bars in all other districts to find the cafs in mine, then skip over cafs in all other districts to find restaurants. Finding anything (especially on the go!) means either manipulating several bookmarks/bent pages or furiously thumbing the pages as you walk straight into a canal.

It would have been much better to have all the listings (separated into types of venues) in one place, ideally after the sightseeing text. This is a much more natural system, as it doesn't assume that sightseeing is separate from eating and that eating is separate from drinking. It would also allow a visitor who wished to do so to split the book (physically) into sections to lower the weight to carry on any given day.

With this one caveat, I can still recommend The Rough Guide to Amsterdam to all visitors: it's comprehensive, informative, opinionated and is bound to be useful regardless of what brings you to the city on the Amstel.

It's easy – and pleasant too - to walk or cycle in Amsterdam, while public transportation system includes excellent tram network, metro (subway) and canal bus boats.

The centre of Amsterdam, where most of the attractions, sights, entertainment and night-life is concentrated, is easily walkable. In fact, walking round Amsterdam, with its picturesque water-side streets lined with traditional canal houses, is one of the greatest pleasures of Amsterdam and an attraction in itself.

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You can also do as many locals do and cycle: bike hire places are widely available and designated cycle lanes are everywhere. Expect to pay around 4 euro an hour, 10 euro a day or 30-40 euro per week (cash deposit or/and passport are required to hire a bike). Get a good lock, though, as theft can be a real problem.

Amsterdam is flat, and cycling is easy (although the humpback canal bridges will require a bit of a push if you are not fit and your bike isn't equipped with many gears).

**

The canals that criss-cross Amsterdam provide excellent opportunity for water transport and there are several companies offering sightseeing cruises as well as a regular canal-bus boats. The Canal Bus operate three colour-coded lines that give easy access to all major sights and provide fantastic opportunity to see Amsterdam from the water level. A day ticket for all the lines cost 20 euro and allows for unlimited use of the network for 24 hours (so if you start at midday you have until midday the next day). If you buy two days, the second one is half price.

The main stop is opposite the central station, but you can get tickets at Rijksmuseum, Leidseplein and Anne Frank House stops as well as at many hotels, Amsterdam Tourist Information Offices. If you just want to hop onto the boat and have no time to get a ticket, you might be able to persuade the skipper to let you on to nip out at one of the main stops to buy your ticket there. Get a map and the timetable to make a full use of this excellent service.

An alternative is a Museum Boat run by a company called Lovers, which has two lines which stop at slightly different locations (the price is the same) and offers discounts on entry to several of the major museums (these have to be pre purchased with a ticket, so planning is needed).

Obviously, the canal boats are not the cheapest or fastest way to travel round Amsterdam, but an a very pleasant one, and at least one such a cruise (whether involving any hopping on and off or not) is a must for any visitor.

If your hotel is near a canal bus stop, the boat is actually a reasonable alternative to a taxi or more conventional public transport when travelling back to the train station (get your ticket the day before to get the full use out of it).

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GBV runs the proper Amsterdam public transport system, comprising trams, buses, small metro and some ferries in the north part of the city. Centraal Station is the hub for all of those, and all are covered by the same ticket system: strippenkaart, a long thin cardboard ticket divided into strips. Fold the card over and validate each strip in one of the on-board machines.

One adult travelling for up to one hour within one zone (most of the central Amsterdam is covered by one central zone) costs 2 strips, extra zone is one strip more. Two or more people can use the same card, provided requisite number of strips is validated. You can change, as long as you remain within the zone and within the 1 hour timespan.

Tickets are available on trams and buses (at 1.60 per journey/zone/hour), but it's cheaper to buy longer cards (15 strips) in tobacconists and GBV offices. An unlimited day card for the whole network is around 6.50 euro.

Trams are the most useful in the centre (buses go mostly to the outlying districts, and so does the metro) and are very easy to use: there is a map of the line on-board each vehicle, the stops are announced by name by an automated voice system in the trams and there is a map of the whole network at each stop.

In my experience the tram and bus drivers are among the few people you might meet in Amsterdam who won't necessarily speak any (or very limited) English, so it's useful to learn how to pronounce your destination name in Dutch.


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The Schiphol airport is connected to the city by frequent (every ten-twenty minutes on weekdays and every hour at night) trains.

We went to Amsterdam in mid February 2009 and as usual, attempted to book a room about two days before our departure.

I left the task to DH for a change and I am glad I did because after seeing prices I probably would have broken down or ended up booking something twenty miles out of the city. As it was, we ended up in the very center.

===Price===

We arrived on a Saturday, and stayed until Wednesday. The rate varied from something in the region of 120 to around 75 euro depending on the night, with the Saturday being by far the most expensive (we have haggled quite a bit to get to the 75 euro), and bearing in mind that during our trip the exchange rate for sterling was hovering around or below parity, we ended up paying on average about 100 per night. This is significantly more than we normally pay for holiday accommodation, but Amsterdam is expensive, and it was our first (and children-free) trip away for over six months; and of course a lot of it was due to the dismal exchange rate just then - everything seemed extortionately expensive.

===Building and Location===

This is a small hotel located over several floors with just a few rooms on each. The charge more for canal-view rooms, and we paid that extra on the first night, but stayed in the same room with a lower rate for the following nights. I think the extra is worth it - in the greater scheme of things - considering the price of the room overall, it at least shows exactly what you are paying for here, which is the location.

It's on Gravelandseveer, on the north bank of the Amstel; bang on the border between the busier city center/University area and the Grachtenrodel; a stone's throw from the Flower Market and within a walking distance or a short tram trip away from most places we wanted to see. The nearby stretch of Amstel (which is the name of the street on the southern bank as well as the river itself) is lined with coffee shops, bars and restaurants (many of them gay bars - we had brilliant time in in one of them in the very late - or early - hours of the Saturday night).

It's an old building and you can feel it as you enter: the staircase is narrow, the lift tiny and the corridors rather narrow. It reminded me of one specific hotel we stayed in once in London, located in an row of adjacent Regency townhouses and I guess the building occupied by the Amsterdam House is similar in age or older.


===Room===

Our room was quite small and from what I could gather, so were the other ones. It had space for a large double bed, a wardrobe, two bedside tables, a dressing table/desk with the tea and coffee tray with a mirror above it and a small round table with two wicker "bucket" type armchairs.

It was just about the right side of cramped and completely adequate for our purposes. There was enough room in the wardrobe for all our stuff and bags, and there were hooks on the door for the coats.

The room had a bit of a shabby feel to it, but it was much more a shabby-chic shabby, than run-down-and-dingy shabby. I actually liked it: there was none of the neatly square newness that makes many business orientated mid-range hotels feel like an extension of an office: more like a nice B&B or a pension, but without the terrible tweeness.

The wardrobe was an old (I suspect semi-antique) wooden affair, and the bed was large and very comfortable, with decent pillows, clean cotton bedding and enough covers. I didn't particularly like the fact that under the sheet the mattress was covered with a waterproof mattress protector: it wasn't exactly a plastic sheet, but noticeable for what it was. It didn't seem to affect my sleep, but I am not sure what would be the effect in a summer heat.

The room was clean (at least by my standards) and somebody attempted to clean it every day of our stay (though we waved them away on two days).

There were shutters, curtains and blinds and we could really keep the light out when we wanted (not that there was that much light to keep out in February Amsterdam). The view was a highlight, of course.

All in all, it was a comfortable room although on a small side.

The bathroom was small and fairly basic, essentially a narrow rectangle with the door in the middle, toilet to one side, sink to the middle opposite the door (nice, new mirror and good lights) and a shower area separated by the curtain to the other side. The shower area was quite spacious: I can't stand those shower cubicles for model-thin people where one keeps bumping into the walls and taps on one's own, never mind when sharing.

The shower itself was good and there was always hot water, and I liked the tiled floor rather than a shower base to step in, but I think a door or a screen of some kind would be better, I often stick to shower curtains.

The room contained a safe but it initially didn't work due to dislocated battery and we actually fixed it ourselves (with some help from the receptionist).


===Breakfast===

We had breakfasts at the hotel on three of the four mornings.

The breakfast room serves as a bar in the evenings and we even spend one evening here in an extended chat with the receptionist, having a coffee and beer on the house. Breakfast is, sensibly for the location, served until midday and is truly excellent.

It's self-service (apart from proper coffee which is served) and mostly a cold buffet in the European style, although there is a hotplate on which you can make fried or scrambled eggs. The choice was excellent and quality pretty good too: ham, cheese, pate and smoked salmon were there every day, with a choice of rolls, bread, croissants, toast and a fantastic version of the Dutch apple cake, an extra-deep flan case filled with a very tasty apple mixture and topped with nuts. There was also tea, whole fruit and a fruit salad; yoghurt, dry cereals and a selction of juices.

The breakfast room takes up most of the ground floor of the hotel and is very pleasant indeed: it felt like a reasonably up-market, European cafe. Comfortable chairs, flowers on the tables, mirrors, lamps and table-lamps: it was all quite burgeois but in the nicest possible way. It felt good to be in a continental city again!


===Extras and Service===

There is wi-fi and Internet access downstairs.

The shared areas are non-smoking, while we were advised that if we wanted to smoke in our room, we would have to do it with a window wide open, as to avoid setting off the sensitive fire alarms. we stuck to this advice and no alarm sounded. I am not sure whether they offer any rooms that are completely non-smoking.

The reception is staffed during the day, while there is nobody there during the night. We never had any problems, but were told tales of people who arrived at the door in the middle of the night and were so drunk that they couldn't operate their entry door key and slept on the pavement despite having paid for the room (although there is a number to phone displayed at the door in case of emergencies).

The staff we encountered in Eureka were helpful and spoke good English, and the one receptionist we chatted to most was particularly friendly and provided us with fascinating insights to Dutch culture in general and Amsterdam specifics in particular.

===Verdict===

It does perhaps depend on what you are used to and what you are after, but for a short break in the centre of Amsterdam the Amsterdam House Hotel Eureka did admirably. Enough character and friendliness to make it memorable, stunning location, lovely breakfast and comfortable beds more than made it up for slight shabbiness. It would have got full five stars if the breakfast was always included in the price, as it is it's a solid four and a recommendation.