The Rough Guide to Amsterdam (Rough Guide Travel Guides) - Softcover

Holland, Jack; Dunford, Martin; Rough Guides

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1858280869 ISBN 13: 9781858280868

Publisher: Rough Guides, 1994

Synopsis

This guide to Amsterdam is a contemporary handbook to Europe's most relaxed and youthful capital. Features include an in-depth coverage of the conventional sights - the canals, the architecture, the muesums - set in context of the life of the modern city. Details of how to get around and where to stay, critical listings of the best bars and brown cafes, clubs and restaurants, including details of the city's ethnic eateries, are listed. Maps of all the city's main neighbourhoods, floor plans of the major museums, background on Amsterdam's history, an account of Dutch art, as well as extracts from modern literature set in the city are also included.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Dunford and Jack Holland have co-authored several Rough Guide titles and were part of the original group who founded Rough Guides in the early 1980's. Phil Lee has worked as a freelance author for Rough Guides for the last fifteen years. His other titles include Norway, Brussels, Canada and Toronto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WHERE TO GO
Confined by the circuitous sweep of the Singelgracht canal, Amsterdam’s compact centre contains most of the city’s leading attractions and only takes about forty minutes to stroll from one end to the other. Centraal Station, where you’re likely to arrive, lies on the centre’s northern edge, its back to the River IJ, and from the station the city fans south in a web of concentric canals, surrounded by expanding suburbs.

Butting up to the River IJ, the Old Centre spreads south from Centraal Station bisected by Damrak and its continuation, Rokin, long the city’s main drag; en route is the Dam, the main square. The Old Centre remains Amsterdam’s commercial heart, with the best of its bustling street life. It also holds myriad shops, bars and restaurants, includes the Red Light District, just to the east of Damrak, and contains dozens of fine old buildings, most memorably the Oude Kerk, the Amstelkring and the Koninklijk Paleis. The Old Centre is bordered by the first of the major canals, the Singel, which is followed closely by the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht – collectively known as the Grachtengordel, or "Girdle of Canals". These canals were part of a major seventeenth-century urban extension and, with the interconnecting radial streets, form the city’s distinctive web shape. This is Amsterdam’s most delightful area and the one you see on all the brochures – handsome seventeenth- and eighteenth-century canal houses, with their distinctive gables, overlooking narrow, dreamy canals: a familiar image perhaps, but one that is still entirely authentic. It’s here you’ll also find the city’s most celebrated attraction, the Anne Frankhuis, a poignant reminder of the Holocaust.

Immediately to the west of the Grachtengordel lies the Jordaan, one-time industrial slum and the traditional heart of working-class Amsterdam, though in recent years the district has experienced a measure of gentrification. The same applies to the adjacent Westerdok, though the origins of this district are very different. The artificial islands of the Westerdok were dredged out of the river to create extra wharves and shipbuilding space during the city’s Golden Age and only in the last few decades has the shipping industry moved out. On the other side of the centre is the Old Jewish Quarter, which was once home to a thriving Jewish community until the German occupation of World War II. Post-war development has laid a heavy hand on the quarter, but nonetheless there are a couple of poignant survivors, principally the Portuguese synagogue and the Jewish Historical Museum. The adjacent Plantagebuurt is greener and more suburban, but it does possess one excellent museum, the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) – as does the neighbouring Oosterdok, another area of former dockland that is undergoing a rapid process of renewal and revival.

Amsterdam’s Museum Quarter contains, as you might expect, the city’s premier art museums, principally the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. Each has a superb collection and both lie just a stone’s throw from the city’s finest park, the Vondelpark. Finally, the residential suburbs – or Outer Districts – spreading beyond Singelgracht are relatively short of attractions, one notable exception being the wooded parkland of the Amsterdamse Bos.

Talk to Amsterdammers about visiting other parts of their country and you may well be met with looks of amazement: ignore them. The Dutch have an outstanding public transport system, an integrated network of trains and buses that puts the city within easy grasp of a large and varied slice of the country. Consequently, the choice of possible day-trips is extensive: the towns of Haarlem and Alkmaar, the old Zuider Zee ports of Marken and Volendam, and two villages, pretty Edam and the recreated seventeenth-century Dutch hamlet of De Zaanse Schans, are all worth a visit.

WHEN TO GO
Amsterdam enjoys a fairly standard temperate climate, with warm, if characteristically mild, summers, and moderately cold and wet winters. The climate is certainly not severe enough to make very much difference to the city’s routines, which makes the city an ideal all-year destination. That said, high summer – roughly late June to August – sees the city’s parks packed to the gunnels and parts of the centre almost overwhelmed by the tourist throng, whereas spring and autumn are not too crowded and can be especially beautiful, with mist hanging over the canals and low sunlight beaming through the cloud cover. In the summer mosquitoes can be bothersome, and at any time of the year, but particularly in summer, try to book your accommodation ahead of time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1858280869
• ISBN 13: 9781858280868
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 288