What better way to start the series than with the place I call hub, Amsterdam. This used to be a small fishing village and is fairly "new" for Dutch standards to be a city, places like Utrecht and Leiden are much older, but the importance of Amsterdam lies in the trade capabilities of this city.
Normally, Amsterdam is associated with prostitutes and drugs, but this is a notion that has been around since the days of the old Dutch colonies, where sailors would return after the duties with their companies to spend their hard-earned wages on prostitutes around the Oude Kerk.
Nowadays, however, you can find British tourists instead of the sailors, all the while the Italian tourist indulge on the local cannabis scene and the Germans crowd the bars and pubs from the crack of dawn.
If the nightlife is your thing, I'm sorry to disappoint but that is not my area of expertise, although there are events every week and it is not difficult to come by the social calendar of the city online.
For people enjoying food, I must say that after 22:00 hrs it get's impossible to find anything good, the only places still open ager hours are either greasy snack bars or tourist traps designed to make unwitting or naïve, or very high people pay three or four times the price for sweets and imported junk food.
So now that we have set the times straight, the amount of incredible little food places spread around the city is huge, but finding the grain between the chaff is no easy endeavour. If there is something that Amsterdam is known for, that's the cut-throat commercial practices, easily illustrated in the Kalverstraat where you can find a McDonald's right next door to a Burger King.
In my opinion, the nicest cuisine you can find in the city is Asian.
From the Chinese and Japanese delights in the Red Light District to the Thai and Javanese in the Rozengracht on the Old West of Amsterdam. There are also plenty of lovely and cosy sushi restaurants ranging from the all-you-can-eat to the mechanised sushi bars as well as fusion with Latin flavours in an elusive food truck from Perú.
The highlights to recommend for me would be the New King in the Zeedijk, Ramen-Ya on the Oudezijds Vorburgwal and the Umaimon in the Leidseplein that specialises in chicken-based broths for its noodles.
Currently, the West-side of Amsterdam is my buurt all the way from the Harlemmerstraat and lower into the city, it is possible to have a great route that starts in the Postjesweg, then Kinkerstraat up to the Elandsgracht where the Jordaan neighborhood begins and the city center starts in the form of the Grachtengordel, the four rings that surround the old city center and were previously used to diverge the flow of the river Amstel that gives the city its name.
Until the next time...
Normally, Amsterdam is associated with prostitutes and drugs, but this is a notion that has been around since the days of the old Dutch colonies, where sailors would return after the duties with their companies to spend their hard-earned wages on prostitutes around the Oude Kerk.
Nowadays, however, you can find British tourists instead of the sailors, all the while the Italian tourist indulge on the local cannabis scene and the Germans crowd the bars and pubs from the crack of dawn.
If the nightlife is your thing, I'm sorry to disappoint but that is not my area of expertise, although there are events every week and it is not difficult to come by the social calendar of the city online.
For people enjoying food, I must say that after 22:00 hrs it get's impossible to find anything good, the only places still open ager hours are either greasy snack bars or tourist traps designed to make unwitting or naïve, or very high people pay three or four times the price for sweets and imported junk food.
So now that we have set the times straight, the amount of incredible little food places spread around the city is huge, but finding the grain between the chaff is no easy endeavour. If there is something that Amsterdam is known for, that's the cut-throat commercial practices, easily illustrated in the Kalverstraat where you can find a McDonald's right next door to a Burger King.
In my opinion, the nicest cuisine you can find in the city is Asian.
From the Chinese and Japanese delights in the Red Light District to the Thai and Javanese in the Rozengracht on the Old West of Amsterdam. There are also plenty of lovely and cosy sushi restaurants ranging from the all-you-can-eat to the mechanised sushi bars as well as fusion with Latin flavours in an elusive food truck from Perú.
The highlights to recommend for me would be the New King in the Zeedijk, Ramen-Ya on the Oudezijds Vorburgwal and the Umaimon in the Leidseplein that specialises in chicken-based broths for its noodles.
Currently, the West-side of Amsterdam is my buurt all the way from the Harlemmerstraat and lower into the city, it is possible to have a great route that starts in the Postjesweg, then Kinkerstraat up to the Elandsgracht where the Jordaan neighborhood begins and the city center starts in the form of the Grachtengordel, the four rings that surround the old city center and were previously used to diverge the flow of the river Amstel that gives the city its name.
Until the next time...
