The last time I rode a bicycle, I had to be pulled out from under the nose of a public bus. That was fifteen years ago. Not much has changed since, except my faith in the merits of personal transport. So you’ll excuse me if Amsterdam, the city of bicycles, tulips and towering blondes (or the capital of pot, nooky and same-sex love, depending on who you ask), never quite made it to my 1,000-places-to-visit-before-I-die list. Which is also why, when the opportunity to fly into that beating heart of the Dutch country recently presented itself, my thoughts turned darkly to my first (and last) trip on a cruise. It wasn’t so bad, was it? The ship didn’t sink. I didn’t have to rely on my dubious swimming skills. Or fish out my scarlet juju swimsuit and cap (easier to spot than aquamarine, you’ll have to agree).

After much ado, thus, I decide - strictly for purposes of occupational engagement - to visit the non-cyclists’ nether lands. That it is meant to be a whirlwind tour - three short days and two immobile nights - help matters immensely. But the match point is a return ticket on KLM’s brand new World Business Class.

As fine a specimen of upper-class mobility as can be, Atlanta KL872 allows little room for kvetching; thanks, mostly, to the new full-flat seat — a total 180 degrees — with a generous two-by-two, double-deck plan on a Boeing 747-400. On board are also some (very, very) tall women in smart KLM blues and some attentive yet measured Dutch service. That the airline offers no First Class seats — Business is king here, Economy Comfort and Economy, lord and baron — makes the perks seem even better. Think a Viktor & Rolf kitbag, tableware designed by Marcel Wanders, Michelin-starred meals and a miniature Delft Blue house — a KLM keepsake since the 1950s- to bag.

Eight-odd hours later, at the Schiphol airport, the parting from my seat and blanket is decidedly bittersweet, leavened only marginally by the prospect of the return journey. Arriving soon after the St Jude’s Day storm battered parts of northern Europe, I expect to find a sky with deep-furrowed brows. So any delays at the baggage belt are hastily forgotten when a gleaming Amsterdam reveals itself beyond the airport’s gates.

Celebrating city Tramping about town later, I give the right of way to the hundreds of cyclists who ride the steel like it’s welded to their life and limb. I wonder whether it’s work or the sunshine that drew them out by the droves and onto the warren of lanes that gird Amsterdam’s famous Canal Ring. Now a Unesco World Heritage Site, the canals — dug entirely by hand - are celebrating their 400th birthday this year. A year that seems destined for many such popping of corks, most crucially for the Rijksmuseum that reopened after a decade, putting Rembrandt’s Night Watch and Vermeer’s Milkmaid back in the public eye. Also donning party hats are the Van Gogh Museum (now 40), Frans Hals Museum (100 years), Artis Royal Zoo (175 years), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Concertgebouw hall at the museum square (125 years each).

Not surprisingly, there is something festive and heady in the air. And no it’s not marijuana — over a year ago, tourists, except Miley Cyrus and her friends apparently, were banned from buying cannabis at the city’s notorious ‘coffee shops’. A move in keeping with the local tourism body’s ongoing attempts to get people like you and me to part with our tourist euros for all but the contents of a bong or fishnet stockings at the red light district.

Like Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a giant clock, wondering how to distil Amsterdam’s best into 56 hours, I spend most of my morning along the western Canal Ring framed by lime and elm trees. A maze of auburn and midnight blue, slate and ochre façades of 17th century merchant homes built in the classicist, baroque, French Rococo and Louis styles, it’s easy to lose your way around here.

Tolerant homes But count the number of bridges you cross, follow the queues to Anne Frank’s house or use the church of Westerkerk’s blue bauble-dome as a landmark, and you won’t need Google to hold your hand. Almost comic in their slenderness — so slender, in fact, that the houses have a large hook to haul furniture to the upper floors — many of these old buildings, including those privately owned, are open to visitors for the Chambres des Canaux or The Tolerant Home, when I visit the city. An exhibition that put on display avant-garde work by local artists, or those with strong Dutch affiliations like Marlene Dumas, in gilded dining rooms and corridors of history. Hardly kosher, yet remarkably well yoked.

With the wind picking up and my shoes fighting the cobbled streets, I head south next to commune with Rembrandt at the Rijks, waylaid often by single-themed boutique stores, peddling everything from Dutch klompen and art prints to vintage wear and kitchen knick-knackery.

I also earmark a jolly old bar near The Pulitzer Hotel for a pint of dark local bockbier later.

The rest, as they say, is a historic haze. Possibly because bockbier is stronger than coffee, especially when drunk in copious quantities. The only thing that could drag me out of bed the next day before the crack of dawn — and what a pretty orange-peach sight it can be for those who rarely, if ever, see it — is the fear of disappointing my six-year-old friend back home. Did you not see the tulips then? Or windmills and dykes? And you went all the way to Umstaadumb!

So I make a quick trip to FloraHolland, the world’s largest flower auction house, at Aalsmeer, near the airport. Here, the solemn bidding in enormous rooms with galleries and giant screens belies the buzz outside in the warehouse. It’s where, with a little help from Adele, hundreds of men and women swarm the shop floor, manoeuvring trolleys packed with every flower you can think of, except in this case, the blooming tulips! For it appears that I’ve missed the trickle of low-season blooms. “You should have come bright and early,” I’m told, belatedly, at 7 a.m.

Where you shouldn’t go early, certainly not before breakfast, is Zaanse Schans, 45 minutes out of town. A surprisingly charming tourist trap with old windmills that still grind grains and pigments, and bucolic cottages that sell cheese and cheesy souvenirs. It’s a place that makes for an illusion so fine, even a bicycle seems out of place and anachronistic.

Which brings to mind a sign I spot on my way back to the airport — ‘ fietsstraat: auto te gast ’ (bicycle lane: cars are guests). It makes me wonder if I missed my chance to get back in the saddle. To ride without fear, with the wind in my hair and a song on my lips… Oh wait, whom am I kidding? I’d rather be a guest in a car. Even in Amsterdam.

The writer was in Amsterdam at the invitation of KLM.

Related Topics