Netherlands

Amsterdam on 27 April is orange. King’s Day empties the offices and fills the canals, and by mid-afternoon most of the city is on a boat, on a bicycle, or sitting on …

I will be honest about my first impression, because it was wrong and it took an hour to correct. From the square, the Royal Palace underwhelmed me. I had come to Amsterdam …

Here is what I knew about Jean-Michel Basquiat before I walked into that room: he went out with Madonna. That was it. That was the whole of it. A man with work …

The Royal Palace on Dam Square has one room that most visitors walk straight past. It sits on the ground floor, on the Dam side, and it is numbered 21 on the …

I walked into this exhibition knowing nothing. I could not have said what Johan Cruyff played, when, or for whom. I knew the name the way a person knows a name: something …

The building on the west side of Dam Square is called the Royal Palace, and it was not built for a king. It was built by a city that had grown rich …

Almost everyone walks straight past the outside of the Moco Museum in Amsterdam. Ticket in hand, timed slot ticking, up the steps and into the villa, because that is where the Banksys …

There is a right way and a wrong way to arrive at a brewery tour. The wrong way is on an empty stomach at eleven in the morning, having walked several kilometres …

I went to Moco Museum in Amsterdam for the Banksys. That was the whole plan. The stencils, the rats, the girl with the balloon, and then out through the shop and home. …

I booked the W Amsterdam in February. A week later a court in Amsterdam ordered the company running it to leave the premises, and every travel forum I read told people to …

There is a line painted on the wall at Moco in Amsterdam, in dripping letters imitating Banksy’s stencil style, that says if graffiti changed anything it would be illegal. He did not …

I found this place in Amsterdam by accident. I was hungry, it was late, I had no reservation and I wanted somewhere that would take me anyway. Four days later I went …