Between its world-class art museums, its eminently wanderable canals and its coffee shops that don't exactly specialise in coffee, its variety is glorious indeed. However, with one of Europe's more forward-thinking cultural scenes and striking new architectural developments in IJburg and the Bijlmermeer, there's much more here to enjoy than the cliches. Written, researched and edited entirely by locals, Time Out Amsterdam has long been regarded as the defintive guide to Europe's most charming city and this 9th edition is our best yet. Completely updated and packed with colour photographs, boxes (from the informative to the opinionated...), detailed maps, critic's picks and at-a-glance references to the best Amsterdam has to offer.
Great for my one-day stint in Amsterdam with my brother. We found what we were looking for... in most cases. There was this floating bar / boat trip around the city's waterways that we had a hard time finding. We had to wind all around the city, but did find it. Only it wasn't in operation anymore and the only way we knew it was the boat was that it was all run down with old bar tables and glasses rolling about on the deck, and there was the faint stamp of a weed leaf on the side, which was painted over with new white paint. But you knew it was the right boat and it looked like people had a pretty bomb time on that thing.
But not us. We ended up taking the cheeseball tour with other tourists in a sanitary / no-booze boat.