Amsterdam guide

VEGETARIAN RESTAURANTS

Vliegende Schotel, Nieuwe Leliestraat 162 (Jordaan), tel. 625 2041, closing 10.45pm, average price €10. Simple, good food.

De Bolhoed, Prinsengracht 60 (Jordaan), tel. 626 1803, closing 10pm, average price €13. Set-price menu changing every day.

FREE AMSTERDAM

These are a few things you can do for free:

• Browse the Flower Market on the Singel.
• Listen to the music from four 17th-century carillons: Westertoren (Tues noon-1pm); Zuidertoren (Thurs noon-1pm); Munttoren (Fri noon-1pm); and Oude Kerkstoren (Sat 4-5pm).
• Visit the Begijnhof, with entrance from the Spui. The Begijnhof is a secluded court of almshouses with a quiet inner garden and the English Reformed Church in their midst.
• Admire 15 enormous 17th-century paintings of the Amsterdam Civic Guards, in the Schuttersgalerij, a covered passageway between the Begijnhof and the Amsterdams Historisch Museum.
• Visit the Historical Museum Gallery, by taking the other exit from the Begijnhof and turning left.
• Explore the beautiful Vondel Park, landscaped in an informal English county garden style. It has duck ponds, flea markets, play areas for children and free open air concerts in the summer.
• Visit the Albert Cuyp market (tram 10 to Frederiksplein, or 4, 16, 24, 25 to Albert Cuyp). It's Amsterdam's most famous day market, with stalls lining both sides of the Albert Cuyp Street.
• Visit the permanent town-planning exhibit in the Zuiderkerk.
• Listen to the barrel organs in the street.
• Admire the Seven Countries Houses, built in 1894 in the styles of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Holland, and England, in Roemer Visscherstraat 20-30.
• Sail on the free ferry from behind Centraal Station to the other side of the IJ to North Amsterdam, and walk along the North Holland Canal.
• Walk around the market at the Waterlooplein.
• Hear the free lunchtime rehearsal concerts at the Muziektheater (Tuesdays) and the Concertgebouw, or Museumplein, (Wedednesdays) every week from October to June, from 12.30 to 1pm. They play chamber music, symphonic performances, or abbreviated previews of a full concert to be played to paying guests that same evening by local or visiting musical groups.
• Climb the tower to the cafe in the Kalvertoren shopping mall, in Kalverstraat near the Munt, and take in the spectacular view.
• Cross the bridge over Reguliersgracht at Herengracht, from where you can see 15 bridges.
• Smell the scents in the Rijksmuseum Garden; see parts of ruined old buildings stored there.
• Walk into the cafe in Metz, on the corner of Leidsestraat and Keizersgracht, and admire the view.
• Stand on the bridge named Magere Brug (meaning Skinny Bridge) over the River Amstel between Kerkstraat and Nieuwe Kerkstraat.
• Watch 3 glass columns filled with water at the Normaal Amsterdams Peil (Normal Amsterdam Level), a fixed point against which measurements of sea level are made, in the passage between Amsterdam’s Town Hall (the Stadhuis) and Het Muziektheater in Waterlooplein. Beside a bronze plaque, 2 of the 3 columns show the current sea level at Vlissingen and IJmuiden, which at high tide is above your knees. The third shows the high-water mark during the disastrous floods in Zeeland in 1953: it's well above your head. The NAP sets the standard for altitude measurements in Europe.
• Visit the Spui Art Market, from March to December, when local artists mount outdoor exhibits along the Spui.
• Watch the outdoor theater on the Amstel River, with performances near the Muziektheater, in the last two weeks in May.
• Visit most museums in mid-April during National Museum Weekend when there's no admission fee, while a few charge greatly discounted fees.

Amsterdam’s brown cafes are so called because of their walls and ceilings, darkened not by paint but from years of cigarette smoking. They are a bit like Irish pubs, very friendly and convivial.
They look more like Victorian parlours than conventional bars. There's often a house cat, who should never be tipped off a seat. Mind you, there is no music in the brown cafes.
An interesting one is De Druif, in Rapenburg 83, opened in 1631. Or try Cafe ‘t Smalle, in Egelantiersgracht 12, with some tables on a wooden deck above the canal. Try also Scheltema, in NZ Voorgburgwal 242, where journalists hang around. And Het Papeneiland, which means Papist’s Island, in Prinsengracht 2, founded in the 17th-century as a refuge for papists.

Bicycles are the quickest travelling means. You can rent a bike for the equivalent of 5 pounds per day. There are several places to hire a bike at reasonable prices.
A good place is MacBike. You can find an outlet on the west wing of the Central Railway Station, Stationsplein 33, tel. +31 (0)20 625 38 45.
Another is in Leidseplein (next to Paradiso), Weteringsschans 2, tel. +31 (0)20 528 76 88.
A third MacBike is Mr. Visserplein 2 (Waterlooplein), tel. +31 (0)20 620 09 85.
There's also Bike City, Bloemgracht 68 (Westerkerk), tel. 6263721.
And Damstraat Rent a Bike, P Jacobszoondwarsstraat 11 (Dam), tel. 6255029.

Four Amsterdammers in 5 own a bicycle, which explains the feeling you have when you're there of an army of flying Dutchmen getting at you at once: more than half-a-million, to be precise.

The city is small, really. If you keep pedalling for 5 minutes, you'll be past the river Ij, in the countryside.
The Yellow Bike Company, tel. 620 6940, organises bicycle tours through the city of Amsterdam and the surrounding countryside. An experienced guide will show you the most beautiful route and fill you in on the history of the areas that you visit, through a landscape of lakes, canals, bird reserves, windmills and meadows.