TRAVELING IN STYLE : CANAL ZONE : With Its Well-Traveled Waterways, Its Eccentric Cafes and Its Easygoing Attitude : Toward Life, Amsterdam Is a Pleasure to Know

AMSTERDAM IS NOT THE MOST famous capital in Europe, but in a sense it epitomizes everything that is most foreign and exotic about the continent. It has more canals than Venice. It has overt prostitution, and drug shops operate as openly as florists. It has an immediately identifiable style of architecture and possesses vast collections of some of the most sublime pictures on earth--many painted by its own citizens. And it has an airport, Schiphol, famous for its amenities (including some of Europe’s best and cheapest duty-free shopping), that stands on a spot that used to be seawater many fathoms deep--the site, in fact, of a famous maritime battle between the Dutch and Spanish navies in the 16th Century.

When my wife and I, not having been to the Dutch capital for nearly 15 years, decided to head back there for a weekend for a quick refresher course in the city’s delights, it was through Schiphol that we traveled. Indeed, the airport is a logical conduit into the city for visitors. Though it is well served by superhighways and rail lines, Amsterdam is a bit too far north to be on the usual tourist Eurailpass or rental-car circuit; it’s not really on the way to anywhere else (unless you’re headed for northern Germany, say, or Denmark). But Schiphol, which regularly wins awards for its sensible design and its friendliness to travelers, welcomes frequent daily flights from most Western European capitals.

It’s easy to get from Schiphol into town. Escalators feed directly from the airport to a terminal from which trains make the 20-minute trip, 24 hours a day, into Amsterdam’s fairy-tale Central Station, an exuberant neo-Gothic palace built on three artificial islands and 8,687 wooden piles. There is also frequent shuttle bus service between Schiphol and the city’s leading hotels, and, of course, there are plenty of taxis.

We took the train and then a taxi to our hotel. Our cabdriver was a chatty, middle-aged woman who said she had been born 100 yards from the house where Rembrandt had lived. “What are Amsterdammers like?” I asked her. “Stubborn,” she said. “Nonconformist. Very big eaters.”

A friendly, nonconformist receptionist checked us into the American Hotel, a comfortable 19th-Century establishment with Art Deco detailing that is near the center of town. Then we did what every visitor is advised to do: We jumped on a boat for a canal tour.

Amsterdam’s horseshoe-shaped system of waterways is based on four concentric main canals linked by a succession of minor cross-canals. While chugging through this system at a gentle speed, the visitor gets a view of the city that seems so privileged and intimate that it’s almost like tiptoeing through the rooms of a palatial private house.

Amsterdammers are so accustomed to canal boats that they don’t really see them--thus small social pageants continuously unfold as they pass. Outside NV Slavenburg’s Bank, for example, I saw a man hand a woman a bunch of red roses. She pondered them for a moment, then almost nonchalantly chucked them into the canal and walked away. The man watched his bouquet slowly spinning and disintegrating in our wake, then shrugged and strolled off with his finger in his ear.

From our boat, we were also able to admire the ornate gables on the great 17th-Century residences along the Herengracht and the city’s narrowest house--no wider than its own front door--on the Singel, the innermost of the city’s four main canals. We saw countless houseboats moored along the canal banks. (There are said to be 2,500 in the city.) We saw the church in which Rembrandt painted “The Night Watch.” We also noticed, lining every canal, six-inch-high railings installed to keep cars out of the water. Without them, remarked the pilot of our boat, “we used to lose 30 a week, mostly on Saturday nights.”

GOLDEN STAINED GLASS LENDS THE ROOM A kind of glowing iconic luster at the Cafe Americain--the marvelous Art Deco confection and national monument that serves as the Hotel American’s coffee shop. Every Amsterdammer is reputed to patronize the place at least once a year, and the city’s artists and intellectuals seem to show up several times a week. Giant helpings of good food are served up by unusually affable waiters. The atmosphere is relaxed, informal and good-humored. Not surprisingly, we spent a good deal of time there.

During dinner on our first night, a tableful of baying British yuppies were drinking too much and behaving badly. Other Britons present cringed with embarrassment, but the Dutch looked on benevolently, as if to ask, “What is wrong with youngsters kicking over the traces occasionally?” Personal freedom, after all, is part of the Amsterdam currency.

There are more than 1,400 coffee shops and bars in the city--roughly one for every 700 inhabitants--and these are an important part of local life. Amsterdammers frequent these places to meet friends, talk business or just take the weight off their feet. The cozy “brown cafes” or bruine kroeg are named for interiors stained by years of tobacco smoke. These, though, should not be confused with the “smoking” cafes. A manifestation of Amsterdam’s astonishingly liberal attitudes, these cafes sell grass and hash along with coffee, beer and sandwiches--though service, considering the usual stoned state of the waiters, may be quite slow.

In need of hot espressos, one cool, overcast morning, we headed for O’Henry’s on the Rokin, a very brown bar whose walls are hung with the mounted heads of buffalo and moose bearing plaques recording the names of the men who allegedly killed them (“Shot by Lord Snowdon,” “Shot by Stalin,” etc.). After sipping our coffee, we set off to explore.

Amsterdam is a walking city, its center small and compact, with enough surprises to keep the wanderer permanently and pleasurably off-guard. This is not a town for purposeful striding; progress at more than 3 m.p.h. and you may miss something important. Thus, though we had begun to investigate the city’s excellent tram system, using strippenkaarts or ticket strips that entitled us to discounted multiple journeys, we agreed to stay off the trams unless our feet really began to hurt.

On foot, then, we visited the Dam Square, where the city was born, about 1270, when a dam was built on the Amstel River. (“Amsterdam” means the dam on the Amstel.) Here, in the shadow of the somber 17th-Century Royal Palace--actually built as the City Hall (Holland’s royal family lives down the road in the Hague)--pretty girls were doing astonishing fire-eating routines, a kilted Scotsman marched up and down playing his pipes and a Trinidadian steel band labored to drown out the delicate woodwind music of the Peruvian band nearby. There were acrobats, puppeteers, mime artists, clowns, performing monkeys and men doing lumbering dances in clogs.

We walked on to the Nieuwe Kerk or New Church, with its stupendous baroque wood carvings, then to Westerkerk (West Church), where Rembrandt occupies an unmarked pauper’s grave, and the Oude Kerk (Old Church), where the artist’s wife, Saskia, was laid to rest. Consecrated in 1300, the Oude Kerk is Amsterdam’s oldest and largest place of worship--a dark, roughly circular structure surrounded by a narrow, cobbled walkway and a circular terrace of neat little houses in which, we surmised, the clergy must live.

But what was this? In the illuminated window of the first of these sat a pale, near-naked woman, smoking and gazing blankly at the church wall opposite. The window of the next house was occupied by a large black woman wearing even less. Every window, we realized, contained a woman or two, all backlighted like statues as they surveyed the passersby. Men with families or female companions were ignored; solitary males got a sharp tap on the glass and a peremptory, unspoken challenge. Nearby, ignored by the prostitutes, a Salvation Army band played mournful hymns, its female tambourine players gazing reproachfully at whatever men were sheepishly heading the wrong way.

Seeking churches, we had wandered into the heart of the red-light district--a web of what seemed like particularly pretty canals, lined not only with houses in whose windows women sat, but also with sex shops, sex shows, sex “museums” and emporia openly selling grass and hash. The guidebooks claim that the area is safe to walk through, but we were happy enough to leave. There were a lot of strange people about, shambling, slack-mouthed, vacant-eyed and mumbling; even the dogs seemed mad, growling at trees, biting their tails and running into walls. Our feet indeed hurting by this time, we took a tram home.

IN THE EARLY HOURS OF SUNDAY MORNING, Amsterdam seems empty, depopulated, as if its citizens had been stricken in their beds by a nerve-gas attack. Nothing stirs. Silence reigns. Then, all at once, like forward scouts from an invasion force, covert figures start slipping into the streets. Some are walking. Some are riding bicycles--and it is immediately apparent that a number of these have not done so for some time. They proceed in small rushes, regularly stopping and dismounting (or falling off) to look at maps or road signs, to peer around corners. And who are these people, performing what looks like some textbook military operation? Why, nobody but the tourists, who, early every Sunday, effectively capture Amsterdam.

This happens because Amsterdammers tend to go into a private retreat on Sundays. The previous afternoon, we had shared a table at the Cafe Americain with a friendly, middle-aged Amsterdam attorney who told us that he spent his Sundays in bed. “Years and years of Sundays have passed me by,” he admitted cheerfully. “I always sleep soundly from Saturday night to Monday morning. A six-day week suits me just fine.”

“What if something really important was going on?” I asked. “Riots or insurrection--or a World Cup football final?”

He was busy eating. A waiter had brought him a multilayered silver cake stand laden with giant slices of cake, meringues, eclairs and sticky, luridly colored things bursting with cream. He seemed to be taking a little of everything. “The only thing likely to get me out of bed on a Sunday,” he said, speaking with his mouth full, “is fire. But it must be a serious fire, you know? If my house was burning down then, yes, I would get out of bed.” He smiled at us. “Please try one of these cakes,” he urged. “They are really delicious. On Saturdays, I eat like a bear preparing to go into hibernation. I face a 30-hour night, and my system needs nourishment.”

He was no doubt snoozing happily as we walked through the Vondel, the city’s small but cheery central park, in the summer sunshine. Here, by the pond, we watched ducks being called and fed in English, Italian, German, French, everything but Dutch--but none of it too loud, since signs in the Vondel prohibit all unnecessary noise. One, for instance, depicts a bongo drummer bisected by a stern red stripe. Next, we thought we’d visit the Bloemenmarkt, Amsterdam’s famous floating flower market. We had glimpsed it two days earlier on our canal tour. Seconds before we saw it, in fact, our boat seemed to run abruptly into a dense cloud of fragrance, like a tiny, localized fog bank. Then we came upon the market, a collection of barges whose bright cargoes lit up the skyline, as their reflections danced in the dark water.

Alas, we learned when we reached the spot, the Bloemenmarkt (like so much else in the city) is closed on Sundays, though a faint, seductive perfume still permeated the air.

While strolling along the Spui, we passed an open doorway leading to a small, grassy quadrangle and thus chanced upon one of the city’s loveliest corners.

The Begijnhof, or Beguine Court (named after the Begijntjes or Sisters of St. Begga, an order of nuns who had established a community here in 1346), is a piece of turf surrounded by impeccably maintained residences, mostly rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries. But the Houden Huis (Wooden House) at number 34, the oldest house in Amsterdam, dates from 1475. Each has a tiny front garden overlooking the elegant little 14th-Century church from which an English-speaking congregation was spilling out into the sunshine.

A varnished sign by the door of the structure identifies it as the English Reformed Church--though my guidebook notes that, since 1607, it has been known as the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Either way, this was the place where the Pilgrim Fathers, fleeing English persecution, came to worship during their 12 years of Dutch exile before returning to England and sailing westward on the Mayflower.

Wandering beneath the trees in front of the church, listening to the cooing of doves, I thought of the Pilgrims’ growing disillusionment with Holland and imagined that astonishing alternative--America!--being earnestly considered and discussed in this very churchyard after morning services. In my head, their voices--urgent, thoughtful, anxious--drowned out the easygoing pleasantries of the smartly dressed men and women who stood chatting here today. I was pleased to note that their presence lent a kind of symmetry to the place, though: Many were American.

WE SAVED ONE OF THE BEST things about Amsterdam for our final hours in the city: a visit to the Rijksmuseum. Amsterdam without the Rijksmuseum would be like a house without windows. Dating from 1885, the Rijksmuseum contains the best and largest array of Dutch paintings in the world (with some major Flemish, Spanish and Italian works as well). Particularly impressive are the large rooms devoted to the works of Frans Hals--and, of course, the jewel in the Rijksmuseum’s crown, the painting around which it was designed: Rembrandt’s massive, stunning “Night Watch.” The radiance of this picture, a masterwork of light and artistry, fills the room. Even at midnight, I’d bet, you could probably thread a needle by it.

As we left the Rijksmuseum and headed back to Schiphol for our flight home, it occurred to me that the entire city might be said to be shaped by light and artistry. Its thousands of graceful historic buildings, its perspectives of old stone and still water, its friendly people and crowded, eccentric pubs--these seemed illuminated by an almost medieval warmth, and shaped by a master’s hand.

GUIDEBOOK

Dutch Treats

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for the Netherlands is 31, and the city code for Amsterdam is 20. All prices are approximate and are based on an exchange rate of 1.85 guilders to the dollar. Hotel prices are for a double room for one night. Restaurant prices are for dinner for two, food only.

Getting there: KLM and Northwest Airlines offer daily nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Amsterdam. United Airlines has daily connecting service through Washington, D.C. There are also more than 20 daily nonstops to Amsterdam from London’s Heathrow Airport, for instance, and at least a dozen from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris--both flights taking just over an hour.

Where to stay: Hotel Pulitzer, Prinsengracht 315-331, telephone 523-5235, fax 627-6753, for reservations, (800) 221-2340, a deluxe hotel in a series of historic buildings, recently purchased by Italy’s Ciga Group. Rates: $220-$250. American Hotel, Leidsekade 97, tel. 624-5322, fax 625-3236, comfortable and not at all “American,” with impressive Art Deco detailing and a popular cafe (see below). Rates: $170-$235. Dikker & Thijs, Prinsengracht 444, tel. 626-7721, fax 625-8986, a small, well-located, handsomely furnished hotel, with a noted restaurant (see below). Rates: $130-$190. Het Canal House, Keizergracht 148, tel. 622-5182, fax 624-1317, small, quiet, American-owned, furnished with antiques and bric-a-brac. Rates: $90-$130. Rho Hotel, Nes 11-23, tel. 620-7371, fax 620-7826, a 1908 theater converted to a hotel about four years ago, dreary from the outside, nicer inside, with functional, well-equipped rooms. Rates: $60-$90.

Where to eat: Cafe Americain, American Hotel, tel. 623-4813, a local favorite, serving Dutch and miscellaneous continental food, including light dishes and a cold buffet plus famous pastries, $55-$65. Dikker & Thijs, tel. 625-8876, an Amsterdam tradition, in three parts--elegant dining room upstairs, brasserie on the ground floor, and French and Dutch specialties, $45-$70. Restaurant Bodega Keyser, Van Baerlestraat 96, tel. 671-1441, a wonderful old Dutch-style bistro/ brasserie next door to the city’s famed Concertgebouw concert hall, particularly good for seafood, $65.

What to do: Begijnhof, Spui, always open; no admission charge. Oude Kerk, Oudekerksplein, tel. 624-9183; open daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Rijksmuseum, Stadhouderskade 42, tel. 673-2121; open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday and holidays from 1 to 5 p.m., closed Monday; admission $6 for adults, $3 for seniors and children 6 through 18; under 6, free.

Canal tours: Boats leave frequently, day and night, from several embarkation points, including Damrak and Prins Hendrikkade, both near the Centraal railway station. One-, two- and three-hour tours are available, for approximately $6, $9 and $15, respectively. For more information: Netherlands Board of Tourism, 9841 Airport Blvd., Suite 102, Los Angeles 90045; (310) 348-9333