1 destination · 28 things to do

Netherlands

Amsterdam is a seventeenth-century merchant city that never stopped working: the UNESCO-listed Canal Ring still bends in four concentric arcs of gabled houses, bridges and houseboats, bicycles outnumber residents, and the paintings that made the Dutch Golden Age famous hang a short walk from the canalside rooms where they were bought and sold. This guide books the city properly — timed slots for Rembrandt's Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum and the world's largest Van Gogh collection next door, the Anne Frank House tickets that only its own website sells and that vanish weeks ahead, a canal cruise on the quiet electric boats that now ply the grachten, the Royal Palace on Dam Square and the swing over the edge of the A'DAM Lookout across the IJ — and pairs it with Jordaan brown cafés, apple cake and bitterballen, a herring at a street stall and a lazy afternoon in the Vondelpark. Then it matches you to the right hotel, from canal-house grandes dames and Museum Quarter luxury to De Pijp design hotels and good-value bases a tram ride out, because in a city this compact and this expensive to sleep in, the right address saves you both time and money.