Amsterdam for The Curious Wanderers: a Friday-to-Monday weekend
Brick, black water, and a bell every quarter hour.
No theme, just the city at its best. The sights that earn their reputation, a workshop or a market, one strange place nobody told you about, and dinner where the food is the point.
Friday: The church in the attic
- Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder
A full Catholic church built across the attics of three houses in 1663, when Catholic worship was tolerated only if invisible from the street.
- Wynand Fockink proeflokaal
A 1679 distillery tasting room down an alley behind the Dam; the glass is filled to the brim and you bend to take the first sip.
- Café 't Smalle
A 1780 tasting house on a Jordaan canal, candlelit inside and with a terrace on the water outside. Order bitterballen and a jenever, and stay for a second round.
Saturday: Farmers and cheesemakers
- Noordermarkt Boerenmarkt
The Saturday organic farmers' market under the church: goat's cheese from Noord-Holland, wild mushrooms and the city's best queue for apple pie at Winkel 43.
- Reypenaer tasting room
A guided tasting of one family's Gouda aged from one to three years, in a canal-house cellar with the wheels in front of you.
- Gebr. Hartering
Two brothers cooking a set menu by candlelight in a narrow room on a quiet canal, sweetbreads and whatever the butcher had.
Sunday: Herbs, hermetica and a hidden library
- Jacob Hooy & Co.
An apothecary trading since 1743, wooden drawers of herbs labelled in copperplate, with a counter that still sells liquorice and tinctures by weight.
- Embassy of the Free Mind
The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in the House with the Heads: Hermes Trismegistus, Böhme and alchemical manuscripts under six stone faces.
- De Kas
A glasshouse restaurant in Frankendael park cooking with what its own greenhouses grow, a set menu at long tables. It is a tram ride out of the centre and worth it.
Monday: A tram depot and a market
- Ten Katemarkt
A six-day street market with no tourists: Turkish bakers, a Dutch fishmonger and the fabric stalls where the Jordaan's seamstresses buy.
- De Hallen
A 1902 tram depot turned into workshops and a makers' shop; the Dutch design stock at The Maker Store is where to spend the last of the budget.
- Foodhallen
Twenty counters under the old tram roof: a bitterballen stall, a Vietnamese bánh mì and a glass of Dutch beer standing up.