INTRODUCTION
Amsterdam has a winter the postcards leave out. It is not the frozen canal and the skaters, which happens once a decade if the city is lucky. It is the ordinary, low, grey season between New Year and the first warm week of March, when the light goes at four and the city draws in.
It is also, quietly, the best time to stay on the Keizersgracht. The house was built for it — thick walls, shutters, a fire in the salon — and it has had three hundred winters of practice. What follows is how we spend them.
CHAPTER ONE
The quiet months
Most people come to Amsterdam in spring. We would gently suggest January. The tour boats thin out, the canal takes on the colour of pewter, and on the rare mornings it snows the whole ring is silent by nine. From the front rooms you can watch the bridge at the end of the canal disappear and return as the weather moves through.
CHAPTER TWO
Lights in the windows
Amsterdam does not close its curtains. At four in the afternoon, when the light goes, every house along the water becomes a row of lit rooms — a bookcase here, a dinner table there. It is the best walk in the city and it costs nothing. Our concierge will draw you a route. It takes an hour, and it ends at the front door.
CHAPTER THREE
Fog days
Some days the fog does not lift at all. On those days the fire in the salon is lit by eleven, Marée sends up soup at noon, and nobody expects you to go anywhere. The thermal pools stay open until ten. There are worse ways to spend a day in a city than not seeing it.
Amsterdam
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Winter on the Keizersgracht
The canal goes quiet in January, and the house is at its best.