Do the Durrell trail
GET back to nature in Corfu with a guided tour of conservationist Gerald Durrell’s favourite spots. Sovereign has a seven-night holiday at the five star Corfu Imperial Grecotel Exclusive Resort, which owns Danilia replica village where Sunday night ITV drama The Durrells is filmed. The £859 b&b trip flies from Gatwick on May 19. Call 01293 832 459 or see sovereign.com. Amsterdam’s Centraal station, where the Eurostar arrives, sits on the waterside right next to downtown. Follow the sound of clanging trams and you’re into a tsunami of bicycles and pedestrians on Damrak. (If you didn’t know it already, Amsterdam is incredibly popular.)
The trams thread calmly through all this, the charming warning of their approach sounding like a musical blacksmith striking his anvil.
As for Damrak itself, it is mostly souvenir shopping – however, if you turn left halfway along it to cross the water, you’re entering the perennially popular Red Light district… more of which later. If you go the other way, plunging into one of the narrow pedestrian alleys to the right of Damrak, you quickly reach Nieuwendijk.
This is a much more people-friendly and carfree street running parallel to Damrak, with good quality high street shopping and eating.
Both of these streets will eventually deposit you in the cobbled Dam Square, in the shadow of the domineering Royal Palace – with living statues, musicians and phalanxes of cruise-boat tourists following their leaders. This axis of Dam Square to Centraal Station is Amsterdam’s hub. Beyond Dam Square, Amsterdam becomes more quirky and interesting – and confusing, because a lot of it looks the same.
There are five concentric rings of canals, each of them busy with boats and lined with tall redbrick former merchants’ houses. Be sure to look up for all the gargoyles, statues and crests and differently-shaped gables, and look down for a procession of canal craft of all shapes and sizes.
A couple of recommended attractions lie within these canal rings. On Keizersgracht, meaning Emperor’s Canal, is the Foam Photography Museum (foam.org), worth visiting not just because of the cutting edge imagery on the walls but also because of the setting in a couple of converted merchants’ houses.
And on the next canal, Prinsengracht (Prince’s Canal) is the Anne Frank House (annefrank.org). The original house where Anne hid stands bare of any furnishings – but it is fronted by new buildings which contain all the historical background, together with Anne’s famous diary.
This is a hugely popular destination, with limited capacity, and if you don’t book you may have to queue for hours. Close to the Anne Frank House is an area collectively called the nine streets (de9straatjes. nl/en), where the city takes on a village feel.
While Damrak and its surrounds are showpiece places for big brands, these 400-year-old streets (Wolvenstraat, Berenstraat, Hartenstraat etc) straddling three canals are packed with artisanal shops and galleries.
These sell everything from paintings to potatoes, with plenty of cafes and restaurants for when browsing becomes too much.
Runstraat has cheese shop Kaaskamer, for example, for typically Dutch goudas and edams. Seek out Pancakes Amsterdam on Berenstraat for a choice of 30 varieties of pannenkoek, including bacon and banana. Just up the same road is Episode, known for vintage fashion.
The same street is also home to that Dutch institution, a brown café, so called because of their wooden interiors and relaxed atmosphere – the walls at ‘t Zwaantje are covered in posters and its bar is groaning with unidentifiable varieties of alcohol. The menu has equally little- known kn Dutch specialities such as “suddervlees” (a winter dish of slow braised beef), and “stamppot” “s (a mash of potato and kale and other ot vegetables, usually served with sausage). The Th big cultural attractions are easily reached from fr the Centraal station on Tram 2, traversing the th picturesque canal rings to Museumplein.
Here the Rijksmuseum (rijksmuseum.nl) is a po powerhouse of Dutch arts and history – the most visited museum in the Netherlands, with lo lots of Dutch Masters, including Rembrandt.
Nearby you’ll find the Van Gogh Museum (v (vangoghmuseum.nl/en), with many of his most fa famous paintings, as well as those of his co contemporaries. Also here is the huge IA IAmAmsterdam sculpture logo, ideal for making yo your own selfie art with your phone.
One block away from Museumplein is the