The Shopping Scene

Shopping can be an interesting extension to your Amsterdam experience, because the center city is small enough that stores and attractions are often right beside each other. Rather than going on dedicated shopping expeditions, it may make more sense to simply drop into close-by stores while you're touring.

Open Hours -- Regular store hours in Amsterdam are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 or 10am to 6pm (some stores don't open until as late as 1pm on Mon), Thursday from 9 or 10am to 9pm, and Saturday from 9 or 10am to 5pm. Many stores open on Sunday too, usually from noon to 5pm.

Prices -- All applicable taxes are included in amounts shown on tags and display cards. End-of-season and other special sales occur occasionally throughout the year.

Tax Return -- If you live outside the European Union (E.U.), you're entitled to a refund of the value-added tax (BTW) paid on purchases totaling 50€ ($80) or more in a day, at a store that subscribes to the refund system, identified by a TAX-FREE SHOPPING sticker. On high-ticket items, the 13.5% savings can be significant. You must export the purchases within 3 months.

To obtain your refund, ask the store for a global refund check. When you leave the E.U., present this check along with your purchases and receipts to Customs. They'll stamp the check, and then you can get the refund in cash or paid to your credit card at any International Cash Refund Point. At Schiphol Airport, this is the Global Refund Cash Refund Office; refunds are also available from the airport branch of ABN-AMRO bank.

For a list of International Cash Refund Points, and for more information, contact Europe Tax-Free Shopping, Leidsevaartweg 99, 2106 AS Heemstede, the Netherlands (tel. 023/524-1909; www.globalrefund.com).

Duty-Free Items -- If you are traveling from one E.U. country to another, you can't buy duty-free goods at airports, on ferries, or at border crossings; you can make duty-free purchases only when traveling to or from the E.U. from a nonmember country. Some duty-free shopping centers, like the one at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, offer reduced prices (close to duty-free prices) for intra-E.U. travelers.

Best Buys

Should an item in an Amsterdam store window take your fancy or fill a specific need, buy it. But often, prices and selections in Holland are too close to -- or more expensive than -- what you'd find at home to justify the extra weight in your suitcase or the expense of shipping. Exceptions are the special items that the Dutch produce to perfection -- Delftware, pewter, crystal, and old-fashioned clocks -- or commodities in which they've significantly cornered a market, like diamonds.

None of the aforementioned items are inexpensive, unfortunately, and you'll want to do some homework to be able to make canny shopping decisions. But you can find excellent values and take home treasures from Holland that will please you more and longer than the usual souvenirs. If money's a consideration, focus on less costly Dutch specialties: cheese, flower bulbs, and chocolate.

Antiques -- All those tankards, pipes, cabinets, clocks, kettles, vases, and other bric-a-brac you see in old Dutch paintings still show up among stores' treasures on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat. It's the 21st century's good fortune that since the 17th century, the Dutch have saved everything, from Chinese urns to silver boxes, cookie molds to towering armoires. With around 160 antiques stores, there's no lack of choice in Amsterdam.

Art -- Galleries abound in Amsterdam, particularly in the canal area near the Rijksmuseum, and their exhibitions prove that Dutch painters are as prolific in the 21st century as they were in the Golden Age. The VVV Tourist Information Office publication Amsterdam Day by Day is your best guide to who's showing what, and where.

Cheese -- Holland is known for its cheese (kaas). Gouda (khow-duh) and Edam (ay-dam) are the two most familiar Dutch cheeses. You have the choice between factory cheese, made from pasteurized milk, or boerenkaas, farm cheese produced the old way with fresh, unpasteurized milk straight from the cow. Boerenkaas is more expensive, but has more taste. Another choice is between jonge (young) and old (oude) cheese. Young cheese is sweeter, moister, and has that melt-in-your-mouth quality, while old cheese has a sharper, drier taste, and a crumbly texture.

Chocolate -- Droste, Verkade, and van Houten are three of the best names to look for. Or seek out the small specialty stores that still hand-fill bonbon boxes.

Cigars -- Holland is one of the world's predominant cigar-producing centers. Serious smokers know that Dutch cigars are different, and drier, than Cuban or American smokes. It's partly because of the Indonesian tobacco and partly because of how the cigar's made. Whatever the reason, Dutch cigars can be a pleasant change for American tobacco enthusiasts.

Crystal & Pewter -- If you recall classic Dutch still-life paintings portraying happy scenes of 17th-century family life, you'll know that crystal and pewter objects are part of Holland's heritage. Crystal has long been associated with the towns of Leerdam and Maastricht (to spot the genuine article, look for the four triangles of the Royal Leerdam label), and pewter of Tiel.

Note: The Dutch government bans the use of lead as a hardening agent, but this assurance only protects you from toxicity in new pewter, so don't buy any antiques for use with food or drink.

Delftware & Makkumware -- Three main types of delftware are available in Amsterdam: Delftware, Makkumware, and junk. None of it is cheap. With a lowercase d, delftware is an umbrella name for all Dutch hand-painted earthenware pottery resembling ancient Chinese porcelain, whether it is blue and white, red and white, or polychrome, and regardless of the Dutch city in which it was produced. Delftware, or Delft Blue (with a capital D), refers to the predominantly, but not exclusively, blue-and-white products of the Delft-based firms De Koninklijke Porceleyne Fles and De Delftse Pauw. Similarly, makkumware is synonymous with polychrome pottery, whereas Makkumware is the hand-painted polychrome earthenware produced only in Makkum, a town in Friesland province, by the family-owned firm Koninklijke Tichelaars, which was founded in 1594.

Genuine Delftware and Makkumware are for sale in specialized stores all over the country (De Delftse Pauw sells its pottery only from its factory and by mail order), but it is far more interesting to go to the workshops in the towns and see how they are made. Little has changed over the centuries, and all the decorating is still done by hand. This makes it quite pricey, but each piece is a unique product, made by craftsmen. Some of the numerous copies of De Porceleyne Fles and Tichelaars products are nearly equal in quality, while others miss by miles the delicacy of the brush stroke, the richness of color, or the sheen of the secret glazes that make the items produced by these firms so highly prized.

To be sure that you're looking at a real Delft vase, look on the bottom for the distinctive three-part De Porceleyne Fles hallmark: an outline of a small pot, above an initial J crossed with a short stroke, above the scripted word Delft. To distinguish Tichelaars products, look for two scripted Ts overlapped like crossed swords.

Blue Days -- Only a few remain of the more than 30 potteries in Delft that in the 17th century worked overtime to meet the newly affluent Dutch's clamoring demand for Chinese-style vases, urns, wall tiles, and knickknacks. Originally, pottery made in Delft was white, to imitate tin-glazed products from Italy and Spain. During the 16th century, superior-quality Chinese porcelain, decorated in blue, was imported to Holland. Delftware factories refined their products accordingly, using a white tin glaze to cover the red clay, then decorating it in blue. This Delft Blue became famous the world over; it was less expensive than Chinese porcelain, and skillfully made. Polychrome decorations were also used, on both white and black backgrounds.

Diamonds -- Since the 15th century, Amsterdam has been a major diamond-cutting center and is one of the world's best places to shop for diamond jewelry and unmounted stones in all gradations of color and quality. Most Dutch jewelers issue certificates for sold diamonds that spell out carat weight, cut, color, and other pertinent identifying details, including imperfections.

Flower Bulbs -- Nothing is more Dutch than a tulip -- even though the flower's natural home is on the high plains of Turkey and Iran -- and no gift to yourself will bring more pleasure than bulbs to remind you of Holland when they pop up at home every spring. You may have a problem making your choices, however, since there's an incredible array of colors and shapes among the more than 800 varieties of tulip bulbs available, not to mention more than 500 kinds of daffodils and narcissi, and 60 varieties of hyacinth and crocus. Many growers and distributors put together combination packages with various amounts of bulbs that are coordinated according to the colors of the flowers they will produce, but it's fun -- since so many bulbs are named for famous people -- to put together your own garden party with Sophia Loren, President Kennedy, Queen Juliana, even Cyrano de Bergerac!

In Amsterdam, you can't do better than to buy them from Singel's Flower Market. And don't worry about failure rates or bug-ridden bulbs -- the Dutch have been perfecting their growing methods and strengthening their stock for more than 400 years. Not all bulbs are certified for entry into other countries, so look for the numbered phyto-sanitary certificate attached to the label -- these allow you to import bulbs.

Say it With Flowers -- Holland has long had a close relationship with flowers, and it's not merely that the tulip fields south of Haarlem are a springtime blaze of color that attracts worldwide admirers. Flowers have deeper roots in this land of flat, green polders. Amsterdam's flower market is only the best-known example of a sales network that makes a flower store a vital service in Dutch towns and villages.

Maybe because so many people live side by side in such a small, well-ordered country, flowers provide a breath of fresh air, a touch of the natural world when much of the environment is artificial. A Dutch house without flowers would be like Edam without the cheese. Gardens, balconies, rooftop terraces, window boxes, and vases, are all pressed into service. Additionally, no visit to a dinner party would be complete without an accompanying bunch of flowers for the host. And Dutch men don't share the macho hang-up that some nationalities have at being seen carrying flowers in public.

Traditional Clocks -- Two types of handcrafted clocks have retained popularity through the centuries. One is the Zaandam clock, or Zaanseklok, identified by its ornately carved oak or walnut case, brass panels, tiny windows on the dial face, and the motto Nu Eick Syn Sin ("To each his own"). The other is the Frisian clock, or Friese Stoelklok, which is even more heavily decorated, customarily with hand-painted scenes of the Dutch countryside, a smiling moon face, or ships at sea that may bob back and forth in time with the ticks.