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My Favourite Places of Amsterdam: April 2018 Edition

I’ve gotten an idea of what to do with this blog. Obviously I haven’t been sitting still for the past months; the weather has actually turned around and there is a lot of sunlight to do stuff again. I visited Rome, but as I returned I didn’t feel the need in creating a post of all the things I saw. Perhaps I’ll do that in the future, but not now. When you get back from an exhausting trip, you want to rest. Not sit behind the computer thinking of something clever to write.

However, due to the good weather, I have been getting outside more and more, and the city of Amsterdam has gotten prettier and prettier. I’d like to catalog and share the experiences and I’d like to create a list of my favourite places of the city I live in. However, with that basic idea there are some problems, because I don’t want to turn into some glorified travel guide. What I’d really like to create is a portrait: how the city looks in MY eyes. The things about the city I like best, and these can be single spots, entire neighbourhoods, shops, restaurants, buildings. The criteria I want to focus on is that they need to trigger and inspire me, to come back for multiple times, and still make me want to come back. I do not aim to be complete. For example, I hate most modern art museums. You will not see any of them here. With this, I hope to bring a bit of personal touches to the tripadvisor-dominated travel culture.

Another challenge: this list is going to be huge and I’m going to aim for a lot of details, plus impressions and opinions can change. I’m not going to be able to just whip this one up in one night, and the city lives and breathes: things I liked one year ago may have lost their meaning right now and vice versa. So this list will be a gradual process. Every month I’ll try to create a new list, in order to portray the gradual evolution of this list. I’m toying with the idea to do the same for the Netherlands, Europe, or other countries that I’ll end up frequently visiting. For now, the April version will be the start.

Flevopark

  • Type: Park
  • Description: This is one of my favourite parks in Amsterdam, and I happen to live quite close to it. It’s a park without any lights, a lake on one side and a Jewish cemetery on the other (that you can’t enter).
  • My impressions: The most famous parks in Amsterdam are all very busy. The Flevopark is just on the outskirts of the city that it’s always quiet, plus it has a number of very beautiful spots, mixing both pine trees and decicious trees. It has open fields, and small paths, surrounded by water that offers you some very nice views.

Zeeburgerbrug

  • Type: the base of a bridge
  • Description: the Zeeburgerbrug (Zeeburger Bridge) connects the eastern part of the city to the northern part of the city, across the IJ river (a very broad one, so there are not many bridges like it). It’s right next to the northern part of the Flevopark, and what makes it special is that it’s one of the very few places in Amsterdam where grafiti is legal.
  • The Netherlands has a very big grafiti scene, you’ll realize that when you take the train or the metro, but most of the stuff there is very basic because real grafiti is illegal, and a lot of it is of bad quality and cleaned up relatively soon. If you want to see the good stuff, you’ll need to know where it is, because you’re not going to just run into it. The Zeeburgerbrug is in an area that you normally would not go to, yet is easy to reach if you take the tram 7 and 14 all the way to their final stops, and it’s where you can find some of the best grafiti Amsterdam has to offer.

Okay, things are getting late. For now this is a good way to start. I will be updating regularly.



This post first appeared on A Dutchman's Footsteps, please read the originial post: here

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My Favourite Places of Amsterdam: April 2018 Edition

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