Forget what you know about Amsterdam’s legal vices. There’s no time for so-called coffee shops when cafe culture is hitting a golden age, when Old Masters are being shown in new, light-bathed galleries, and when even De Wallen, the city’s notorious red-light district, is being swallowed up by locavore restaurants. And in December, Eurostar is introducing a no-change London-Brussels-Amsterdam service, getting you from St Pancras to Centraal station in just four hours.
Still, there’s no time like the present...
What to do
Rijksmuseum
It’s four years since Holland’s national museum finished a 10-year spruce-up, and it’s looking more regal than ever. Go at opening time, 9am, and head straight to the Gallery of Honour, on the second floor — this is where you’ll find Dutch Golden Age headliners such as Vermeer, Hals and Rembrandt. (The Night Watch is at the far end.) Once that starts getting crowded, retreat to the other galleries for early Rembrandts, William III-era Delftware and Van Gogh down on floor one (£15.30; rijksmuseum.nl).
Stedelijk Museum
Museum Square is packed most days, but this great white bathtub-shaped art museum is always calm. Exhibitions capture the boldness of modern Dutch masters such as Van Gogh and de Kooning. Also on display are wacky midcentury gadgets, rhythmic primary-colour studies by De Stijl artists — the movement is 100 years old this year — and challenging “deconstructed” portraits, where a face in a photograph is distorted or manipulated to eerie effect (£13; stedelijk.nl).
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Rembrandt House
In his Night Watch pomp, Rembrandt lived and worked in this grand pile. It cost him an absolute fortune and, although he earned well, the hefty mortgage forced him to sell everything and flee. You won’t see his paintings, but some recovered furniture has been placed in situ, along with his own art collection, which includes work by his students and contemporaries such as Pieter Lastman. Grab a free audio guide and make a beeline up the creaky staircase to the first floor, where one of the resident artists will be laying out powders and oils for a demo (£11.30; rembrandthuis.nl).
Cromhout House
The Cromhouts were one of the wealthiest families in Amsterdam, holding salons at their adjoining houses on the Herengracht canal in the 17th and 18th centuries. The ravishing rooms, festooned with flowers and family silver, are open from Tuesday to Sunday, as are the cafe in the kitchen, which looks like the one in Downton Abbey, and the garden room. Sunday at 4.45pm is the time to come, when chamber orchestras, jazz trios, crooners and divas perform on antique instruments in the grand salon (admission £7.40, music afternoons £15.50; cromhouthuis.nl).
De Hallen
Follow the trolley tracks into this repurposed tram depot to rummage through independent fashion, flip through art ’zines and sample craft gin (dehallen-amsterdam.nl). On weekends, the soaring glass-roofed building is crammed with crafty market stalls, but you can visit any day to eat at Foodhallen, a gastronomic mecca with a cultural pick’n’mix of stalls serving everything from Asian fast food to Dutch bitterballen and gourmet nachos (11am-11.30pm; foodhallen.nl).
Clever classics
Anne Frank House
You can book two months in advance for timed entry between 9am and 3.30pm. Not a planner? There are tickets on the door after 3.30pm. Pass by at about 2pm: if the queue is barely snaking round the corner on Westermarkt, you shouldn’t have to wait more than 30 minutes to get in once the doors open. If it is any longer, come back after 6pm, when the queue starts to dwindle; in summer, it’s open until 10pm (£7.85; annefrank.org).
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Van Gogh Museum
Online tickets are available four months in advance, which means priority queues and minimal waiting time. Left it a bit late? You can book on the day. The trick to calmer viewing, however, is to visit on Friday evening, when cocktails and live music fill the vast new entrance hall until 10pm. Skip the audio guide — download the free Touch Van Gogh app to your tablet and enjoy nerdy detail about Field with Irises Near Arles, The Bedroom and other masterpieces. Better still, join one of the free tours in English at 8pm — there’s no need to book (£14.80; vangoghmuseum.nl).
Amsterdam by bike
Two wheels is the classic way to explore the city. You’ll find dozens of hire shops around town, but book with MacBike and you can grab your bike at Centraal station, right off the train from the airport, then cycle to your hotel. Over a long weekend, you’ll save on journey times, taxi fares and stress from clueless Uber drivers (from £4.35 an hour, or £19 for three days; macbike.nl).
Where to eat
Louis
This canal house is in a state of charming decay, with crumbling brick showing under the peeling plaster. On a candlelit evening, it couldn’t be more enchanting — although most guests perch outside, nibbling goat’s cheese salad and boards of raw beef sausage. Burgers and chicken wings feature on the menu, but the vibe (and wine) is French (mains from £4.75; louis-amsterdam.nl).
D&A
This casual diner stuffed with mismatched furniture calls itself a “hummus bistro”, which belies the quality of the concise Israeli menu. Said hummus is a base for fall-off-the-bone chicken and tender beef stew, but there’s also aubergine seared black and topped with tahini and pomegranate. The service, too, is Mediterranean warm (mains from £8.25; dna-hummusbistro.com).
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Strangelove
Welcome to the former Pathological Anatomical Laboratory, aka the morgue. Yet Strangelove, part of a complex of galleries and cinemas in off-piste Oud-West, is very much alive with lush greenery and the local literati. The Italian-themed menu offers dishes such as cannelloni with crab, asparagus, razor clams and cauliflower cream. Finish with blueberry cheesecake with lavender meringue, limequats and lemon cress (mains from £15.70; lab111.nl).
Rijsel
This riverside restaurant takes the Dutch name for Lille, in northern France. Even more confusingly, it closes at weekends. But try to get there for the rotisserie chicken with crispy skin or pink prime rib, sliced thin and set off a treat by buckets of deep French red (three courses £30; rijsel.com).
Merkelbach
This coach-house restaurant in Park Frankendael, a marshy landscape surrounded by dykes, serves vellum-thin shavings of locally grown veg and booze-steeped fruit. You’ll learn the provenance of your pork and fish, and courses such as fish soup and beet ricotta ravioli will arrive at a leisurely pace: slow food is the chef Geert Burema’s claim to fame (four-course chef’s menu £45; restaurantmerkelbach.nl).
The big night out
The east end — or Oost — is a hotbed for all things indie, experimental or warehouse-adjacent. Get an early start at Bar Botanique (barbotanique.nl), a mirrored, suitably verdant joint still with the wood panelling from its origins as a traditional “brown café” in place. At cocktail hour (or as the Dutch say, borrel) you can slurp frozen margaritas (£8.50) in velvet easy chairs the colour of gemstones.
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From here, walk to the former burlesque club where chef Michiel van der Eerd relaunched his riotous restaurant Baut Paradijs (mains from £11; bautamsterdam.nl). He’s stripped back the heavy velvet curtains to expose lofty ceilings and clerestory windows, and installed a busy open kitchen delivering creamy curries, fresh oysters and heaped tartares (meat or, oddly, truffle). The best tables are up on the stage, from where you can watch the elegantly wasted scene below.
Tongue loosened and mind opened is how you want to approach Ruk en Pluk (beers from £2.35; Linnaeusstraat 48), a few minutes down the road. Over the years, the walls have been layered with football pennants, Christmas lights and kitschy figurines. The local crowd is an equally eccentric mix of barflies, hipsters, pensioners and students — all fairly liquored, despite those tiny Dutch beer glasses. Recruit some for your gang.
Don’t flag now: there’s still time before the lights go up at Canvas (cocktails from £8.70; volkshotel.nl; weekends until 4am), where the beer is cheap and haircuts androgynous. A roster of statuesque DJs play pumping sets of funk and techno, peppered with pop hits. You’d sweat for England were it sited anywhere else, but here on the seventh floor the doors are flung open to a terrace overlooking the skyline.
The new district
Noord
The observation deck just opened at the new A’dam Tower, in Noord (lookout £11; adamtoren.nl), and suddenly the neighbourhood is luring weekenders and night owls alike onto the five-minute ferry across the river.
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They aren’t just coming for the tower’s 20th-floor skybar and giant roof swing. We like the offbeat bars in the former warehouse district, such as Cafe Noorderlicht, which dishes out locavore meals (mains from £15; noorderlichtcafe.nl), and Pllek, which offers outdoor film screenings and live music on a ramshackle stretch of waterfront (mains from £11; pllek.nl). Then there’s Cafe Modern, the latest venue from the people behind the trendy Dutch-French restaurant De Goudfazant, set in a former bank (set menu £35; modernamsterdam.nl).
Along the marina, you’ll find galleries such as Francis Boeske, which shows work by Dutch expressionists (francisboeskeprojects.nl). Bag an artisanal sourdough loaf at Bbrood (bbrood.nl) and have a drink at Botel, a converted liner with a marvellously kitschy bar and basic rooms (doubles from £75; botel.nl).
If you’re on a bike, follow the path by the new metro line (opening next year) into the wetlands. It’s a 20-minute ride to the clapboard villages of Zunderdorp and Ransdorp.
The trend
Tradition
Amsterdammers (or Mokummers in local slang) have had enough of trends, frankly. When it comes to restaurants and bars, people across the city are returning to their Dutch roots. That’s why the regulars at traditional “brown cafes” (pubs) such as Hoppe are getting younger (cafehoppe.com), and bars such as Ruk & Pluk (see The Big Night Out) are rammed at all hours.
Restaurants, too, are going trad: you need to reserve days in advance for the old-school Gouda fondue at Bern (mains from £15; cafebern.com), while bitterballen — deep-fried meatballs — are making a comeback. De BallenBar, a stall dedicated to the retro snack, recently opened at Foodhallen, with novelty flavours such as Thai curry (from £2.60 for three; deballenbar.com).
In Jordaan, blonde bombshells in leather jackets eat Dutch apple pie at Cafe Papeneiland, with a wood-panelled interior that has barely changed since the 17th century (£3.45; papeneiland.nl).
Hotels
The Lloyd
Once home to shipyards, the Eastern Docklands now house sun-splashed terraces, buzzing bistros and the Lloyd, a rambling former prison reborn as a quirky hotel. Rooms are rated from one to five stars and accessorised accordingly — from basic twin beds and a table in a one-star to animal-skin rugs and in-room baths in a five-star. Poetry readings and music regularly take over the vaulted lounge (doubles from £49; lloydhotel.com).
Hotel Arena
The rooms at this 1886 converted Catholic girls’ orphanage in the Oosterpark neighbourhood are both kitsch and contemporary, with black-tiled bathrooms, high ceilings, sunken bathtubs and minimalist beds. Poke your head in to see the restored frescoes in the chapel, then have a drink in the sun on the leafy Park Café’s pale-brick terrace, which stretches right to the edge of the park (doubles from £120; hotelarena.nl).
Sir Adam
The A’dam Tower (the old Shell Tower), overlooking the river in Noord, now has disco lifts with flashing floors. These take you to rooms with concrete walls, full-height windows, prints of old rockers such as Mick Jagger and Bryan Ferry, Gibson guitars and turntables stocked with a range of vinyl (doubles from £150; sirhotels.com/adam).
Ink
This refit of a former newspaper building is layered with oversized letterpress blocks, vintage typewriters and inky-blue upholstery. Rooms are crisp and tailored, with brass-edged bathrooms and slinky teak desks. Ask for a rear-facing room, though — this close to the trams and trains, the street below never sleeps (doubles from £190; sofitel.com).
Pulitzer
After a full renovation last year, the Pulitzer is now the gem of the Nine Streets, Amsterdam’s swankiest shopping area. The tufted velvet seating is surrounded by steel-framed windows and low, sexy lighting; the bijou bathrooms have metro tiles. It obviously appeals to the soigné Americans who stream from the lobby... before losing their way in the maze of converted 17th-century canal houses outside (doubles from £195; pulitzeramsterdam.com).
With the kids
Micropia
The Artis Royal Zoo is a decent inner-city menagerie, but Micropia, next door, is the true marvel. The world’s first museum dedicated to microscopic organisms, it’s an anti-safari — a dark crawl from microscopes to light walls to body scanners magnifying the creatures that infect our insides. None of the fungi and bacteria is bigger than an ant, yet blown up to giant size, they provide spectacular gross-out material (£6.50-£12, free for under-3s; micropia.nl).
OBA Central Library
Amsterdam’s main library has appointed a nine-year-old Kinderdirecteur to help curate the kids’ programme in this modern building by Centraal station. Head to the basement to view the latest exhibits, loll in oversized chairs reading Miffy books and inspect the “mouse house”, a 100-room toy-rodent diorama. Then hit the top-floor cafe for fresh smoothies and city views (free; oba.nl).
Eye Film Museum
That shiny white monstrosity across the River Ij is the Eye Film Museum, where you can spend an hour on the kids’ floor touch-drawing on a wall-sized tablet and performing in your own film on the green screen. In the huge cafe, kids can climb on raised platforms and run down ramps while you have a cuppa (£3-£11, under-12s free; eyefilm.nl).
What to buy
Stroopwafels
At the Albert Cuyp market, in the De Pijp district, follow your nose to the sweet-scented stroopwafels. These caramel-centred waffles are served hot from the iron. Have one now and buy the packaged biscuit versions for home (10 for £2.15; albertcuyp-markt. amsterdamhttp://albertcuyp-markt.amsterdam/ ).
Dutch design
North of the Rijksmuseum, Spiegel is a modern boutique in the mass of antiques arcades on Spiegelstraat. It sells Dutch-made homewares, jewellery, stationery and fashion — you’ll find Royal Delft pottery and kitchenware by Royal VKB alongside indie labels such as Pepe Heykoop, an interiors firm, and HotelFietsBel’s bike bells (spiegelamsterdam.nl).
Curiosities
The Otherist, in Jordaan, is a proper cabinet of curiosities. You can buy a stick insect in a vitrine, a necklace charm cast in the shape of an alligator’s skull or a “vegan” human skull composed of 80 cardboard pieces. Best, though, are the amazingly realistic antique glass eyes from the early 20th century, in virtually any colour (otherist.com).
Send us your Amsterdam tips and tales — and win free flights
Which Amsterdam sights and experiences have we missed? Send your stories and suggestions to travel@sunday-times.co.uk and you could win a pair of return flights with Monarch. See thesundaytimes.co.uk/travelletters for full Ts & Cs.
Find more Amsterdam tips at thetimes.co.uk/insider
Ellen Himelfarb was a guest of Hotel Arena, Pulitzer and Sir Adam
