AMSTERDAM TRAVEL GUIDE: How to Feel, Eat and Live the Most Free Capital in Europe

In the seventeenth century it chose commerce, tolerance and freedom of thought as the organizing principles of its society. Four centuries later it remains the most open and most free city in Europe, and that coherence between what it was and what it is makes it completely unique. Its four main canals declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its seventeenth-century red brick houses with stepped gabled facades, the Rijksmuseum with Rembrandt's Night Watch, the Van Gogh Museum with the world's largest collection of his work, the Anne Frank House, raw herring at the street stall and bicycles absolutely everywhere.

In just over an hour you will discover how to get around a city where the bicycle matters more than the metro, what to see without wasting time, where to eat from Surinamese roti to new Dutch cuisine, how its nightlife works between Paradiso and the bruin cafés and how to organize your trip around however many days you have. Complete with itineraries for two, four and six days, practical advice on weather, money and safety, and the best day trips from the city: Keukenhof in spring, Haarlem, Delft, The Hague, Rotterdam and the Kinderdijk Windmills.

Amsterdam is waiting for you. And it is exactly as beautiful, as free and as surprising as they say.