What's New: An Online Update for Frommer's Amsterdam

In 1606, the great artist Rembrandt van Rijn was born in Leiden. He later moved to Amsterdam, where he won fame and fortune -- and later suffered bankruptcy and obscurity. Both Amsterdam and Leiden are recalling the 400th anniversary of his birth with a program of special events and exhibits, not least at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum; Jewish Historical Museum; and his city mansion, now the Museum Het Rembrandthuis. In Leiden, there's a Rembrandt Walk that takes in the Rembrandt Visitor Center; the house where he was born, at Galgewater on the Rhine River, just inside the city walls in the west of town (hence his surname "van Rijn"); the Latin School he attended as a boy; and his first studio. For more information, contact VVV Amsterdam, Postbus 3901, 1001 AS Amsterdam; tel. 0900/400-4040; fax 020/625-2869; www.visitamsterdam.nl; and VVV Leiden, Stationsweg 2D, 2312 AV Leiden; tel. 0900/222-2333; fax 071/516-1227; www.leidenpromotie.nl.

Hawk-eyed riders on the city's excellent public transportation trams, Metro trains, and buses will have noticed that the popular "strip card" ticket (or tickets, since there are several different kinds) is called a Nationale Strippenkaart (National Strip Card). No, this doesn't allow you to strip off willy-nilly on buses and trams throughout the realm -- even Holland isn't that uninhibited -- but it does mean you can use the same card on public transportation in cities, towns, villages, and the remotest way-out-in-the-boonies scrap of countryside. So if you are traveling on from Amsterdam to anywhere else in the country and you still have strips left on your strip card, hang on to it.

The new IJtram line, nearly completed at press-time and due to begin to enter service on May 29, 2005, will connect Centraal Station and the new residential districts in the old Eastern Harbor area along Het IJ. Among its stops will be one for the new Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ concert hall, the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam cruise-liner dock, and the new residential, shopping, and entertainment zones of the harbor's redeveloped Eastern Islands. It will go as far as the still-under-construction IJburg suburb, on an artificial island off the south shore of the IJsselmeer lake.

Where to Dine

In December 2004, celeb British chef Jamie Oliver brought his unique Fifteen restaurant concept from London to Amsterdam, by opening a branch of the budding chain there (he reportedly plans further openings in New York, Sydney, and other cities). Oliver presents his own, internationally syndicated BBC cookery show, The Naked Chef, his cookbooks sell like hot cakes worlwide, he rustled up Tony Blair's Christmas dinner, and he likes to tool around town in his Maserati. But his cool and wildly popular London Fifteen eatery took on loser street kids and trained them up to be more than acceptable chefs and restaurant workers, and his Amsterdam venture adopts the same approach. Even though Oliver won't often be presiding in person, you can try out his fun-cooking concept at Jollemanhof 9 (tel. 020/5304578; www.fifteen.nl; tram: IJtram), in the old Brazilië building, off of Oostelijke Handelskade, in the harbor redevelopment zone east of Centraal Station.

There's Chinese and there's Indonesian, see -- and in Holland there's Chinees-Indisch (Chinese-Indonesian), too. Chinese and Indonesian restaurants might be good or might not be, but at least they can be assessed purely on their own national merits. Chinees-Indisch restaurants rarely, if ever, are any good (I can't think of a single one worth recommending, and there's plenty of them). Places that do this crossover style can't get either one right, so you end up with a kind of Oriental dog's dinner on your plate. Look out for the Chinees-Indisch label along with the restaurant name, and give the establishment a wide berth.

What to See & Do

For more than two centuries after Amsterdam's 1578 Protestant revolution, the Alteratie, other Christian denominations were forbidden to worship openly. Clandestine places of worship sprang up around the city. The best known of these is the Catholic Our Lord in the Attic, now the Museum Amstelkring. Another, which is in fact Holland's oldest and largest, is the Remonstrant Church in a onetime hat store called De Rode Hoed (The Red Hat), Keizersgracht 102 (tel. 020/638-5606; tram: 6, 13, 14, 17), in a fine canal-side building -- look out for the little red hat on the gable stone. The chapel in back, with an upper-floor balcony and an impressive organ, dates from 1630 and is now a venue for classical music concerts and debates.

The country's premier museum, the Rijksmuseum, is still working through its 5-year mission to refit itself for the 21st century, a process that's due to end in 2008. Most of it is closed, but key paintings and other works from the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age collection can be viewed in the museum's own Philips Wing, under the banner of Rijksmuseum: The Masterpieces. Interestingly, even in its drastically reduced circumstances, the "State Museum" is still one of the leading museums in the land -- and even in Europe as a whole.

The modern art Stedelijk Museum's permanent premises have shut entirely for the period of its refurbishment, until some time in 2006. But lovers of modern art can catch the latest show at Stedelijk Museum CS, its temporary quarters just east of Centraal Station (hence the "CS").

Should you require additional proof that there's more to the Red-Light District than ogling the barely clad "ladies of ill repute" (some of them are in fact of quite considerable repute, but that's another story) behind the multitudes of red-fringed windows, here is some more architectural history to beguile your steps. Note the graceful accolade arches, double pilasters, and window cartouches at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 57, a Baroque Renaissance canal house from 1615 by architect Hendrick de Keyser, and dubbed De Gecroonde Raep (the Crowned Turnip) after a motif on the façade.

Across the canal and a couple of blocks north, at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 14, on the corner of Oudezijds Armsteeg, you'll notice a beautiful, step-gabled, red-brick building that leans out crazily over the sidewalk -- if you don't first trip over its projecting basement. It's called Het Wapen van Riga (The Arms of Riga), and was built in 1605 in the Dutch Renaissance style by a merchant from the Baltic city of Riga. It now houses a Leger des Heils (Salvation Army) hostel.

Shopping

Due to a simple, minor oversight of the kind that really could happen to anyone (translation: a stupid mistake), the author forgot to delete from the book a store that has been closed for several years. Marks & Spencer, a branch of the British department store chain, was popular -- though evidently ever less popular -- for its comfy underwear and prepared foods, a combination that maybe speaks volumes about why the group was in such deep financial trouble that it shut down its operation in Holland (and in other countries).

Nightlife

Opened in early 2005 in a spectacular piece of modern architecture on the IJ waterfront, the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Piet Heinkade 1 (tel. 020/788-2000; www.muziekgebouw.nl; tram: IJtram), just east of Centraal Station), is the new home of the former Muziekcentrum De IJsbreker, the then grungy foundation for avant-garde and experimental music. This ocean of glass is far from being grungy. The main hall seats around 750 and a smaller foyer hall 125, and you can look for concerts of modern, old, jazz, electronic, and non-Western music, along with small-scale musical theater, opera, and dance. A kind of next-door annex to the Muziekgebouw is the equally new home of the Bimhuis jazz and improvised music club. It's a powerful indicator of how Amsterdam is changing that these two "alternative" music operations should now be housed in such a futuristic setting. A visit to the concert hall's in-house cafe-restaurant, and in fine weather a seat outside on its waterfront terrace, would alone justify the short walk or tram ride here from the Center.

What's New in Nearby Destinations

The Hague

The elegant little Galerij Prins Willem V, Buitenhof 35 (tel. 070/302-3435; www.gemeentemuseum.nl; tram: 10, 16, 17), across from the Binnenhof, is a kind of separate annex of the Mauritshuis Royal Cabinet of Paintings, and if you have a ticket to that museum you'll get in here free. The country's first purpose-built art gallery, it opened to the public in 1774 to display the private collection of Prince of Orange Willem V. Most of the 150 paintings from the Dutch Golden Age are the original occupants of the gallery, arranged in the cluttered style of the time. There are few internationally known works, but all the paintings have an interest of some kind, and a cumulative impact. Look out for Jan Steen's shiver-inducing The Toothpuller (1651), and give thanks for modern dentistry.

Rotterdamm

Each year, for 3 days during the second weekend in July, jazz greats from around the world gather in Holland for the North Sea Jazz Festival. This non-stop extravaganza features star performances by internationally acclaimed musicians, in 200 concerts on 15 stages, playing jazz, free jazz, blues, Be Bop, and world music. It had always been held at the Nederlands Congres Centrum, Churchillplein 10 (tel. 070/900-9810; tram: 10), in The Hague, and will be in 2005, too. But that's its last year there. Beginning in 2006, the festival moves to Rotterdam, where its new venue is the Ahoy, Zuiderparkweg 20 (tel. 0900/235-2469).

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