INTRODUCTION
Every concierge has a list, and most of those lists are the same: the museums, the canal tour, the restaurant with the long waiting list. Ours has those too, and we are happy to book them. This is the other list.
These are the places the people who work in the house go on their own evenings off — none more than a quarter of an hour’s walk from the door, most of them without a website, and all of them better visited than read about. There are seven. The last one is the easiest to find.
CHAPTER ONE
After rain
One: the brown café two canals over, where the floor has been worn smooth by three hundred years of shoes and no one will ask you to leave. Go after rain, when the windows fog. Two: the cheese shop on the corner of the Jordaan that has sold the same four goudas for as long as anyone remembers. Ask for the oldest, and eat it standing up.
CHAPTER TWO
Walking at night
Three: the small bridge at the end of our own canal, at midnight, when its arches light up in the water. Four: the oyster bar near the flower market — standing room only, open until the oysters run out. Five: the bookshop behind the Westerkerk, with a chair in the window that is nearly always free.
CHAPTER THREE
The ones we arrange
Six: an hour in a canal-house museum before the doors open, with the old masters and no one else. Seven is ours. After a day of the city, come back to the salon, where the fire is lit and a drink is already poured. The concierge will book any of the others for you. This one needs no reservation.
Amsterdam
2 min read
Seven addresses we send guests to
Not a list of sights. The places we would go ourselves, a short walk from the door.
NEXT IN THE JOURNAL
Winter on the Keizersgracht
The canal goes quiet in January, and the house is at its best.