Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [141]
Smart Cinema 1e Const. Huygensstraat 10 (Museum Quarter and Vondelpark) 020/427 5951, www.smartprojectspace.net. Tram #3 or #12 to Overtoom. Small cinema near the Filmmuseum showing the best non-mainstream offerings, with short experimental films, sometimes video art, before the film begins.
Studio K Timorplein 62 (Old Jewish Quarter and Eastern docklands) 020/692 0422, www.studio-k.nu. Cultural hotspot containing a small cinema, theatre, music venue and restaurant in the eastern part of the city; run solely by students. Small selection of art-house movies for €7. Conveniently located in the same building as the Stay Okay Zeeburg hostel.
Tropentheater See "Tropentheater". Attached to the Tropenmuseum, this theatre concentrates mostly on music and dance, but puts on ad hoc themed film events focusing on cultures from around the world. No screenings in June & July.
Tuschinski Theater Reguliersbreestraat 26 (Grachtengordel south), www.pathe.nl/tuschinski. Fabulous Art Deco theatre, famous for its hand-woven carpet and hand-painted wallpaper, this film house shows the artier offerings from the mainstream list.
Tuschinski Theater
De Uitkijk Prinsengracht 452 (Grachtengordel south) 020/623 7460, www.uitkijk.nl. Pronounced “out-kike”, the oldest cinema in the Netherlands is a converted canal house with no bar, no ice cream and no popcorn – but low prices. Shows popular movies for months on end.
Shopping
Variety is the essence of Amsterdam shopping. Whereas in other or cities you can spend days trudging around in search of something interesting, here you’ll find every kind of store packed into a relatively small area, plus a handful of great street markets. There are, of course, the obligatory generic malls and pedestrianized shopping streets, where you can find exactly the same stuff you’d see at home, but where Amsterdam scores is in its excellent, unusual speciality shops – dedicated to rubber stamps, Indonesian arts or condoms, to name but three, almost always owned by a family or individual.
Shopping in Amsterdam can be divided roughly by area, with similar shops often huddled together in neighbouring streets. Broadly speaking, the Nieuwendijk/Kalverstraat strip running just west of Dam Square in the Old Centre is home to high-street fashion and mainstream department stores – crowded Saturday afternoons here can be a grim experience – while nearby Koningsplein and Leidsestraat offer a good selection of affordable designer clothes and shoe stores. In the Grachtengordel and the Jordaan, further to the south and west, many local artists ply their wares; you can find individual items of genuine interest here, as well as more specialized and offbeat clothes shops and some affordable antiques. Bear in mind, however, that the major canals of the Grachtengordel (Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht) are mostly given over to homes and offices, and it’s along the small radial streets that connect them that you’ll find the more interesting and quirky shops, many of which are listed on the website www.theninestreets.com; the nine streets concerned extend south from Reestraat/Hartenstraat to Runstraat/Huidenstraat in Grachtengordel west.
Elsewhere, pricier antiques – the cream of Amsterdam’s renowned trade – can be found in the Spiegelkwartier, centred on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, while to the south of the centre, P.C. Hooftstraat, Van Baerlestraat and, further south still, Beethovenstraat play host to designer clothes shops, upmarket ceramics stores, confectioners and delicatessens.
As regards opening hours, many shops take Monday morning off, not opening until noon or 1pm and closing again at 6pm. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, hours are mostly a standard 9am to 6pm, although the larger shops in the centre have shifted towards a 7pm closing time. Thursday is late-opening night (koopavond), with most places staying open from 9am until 9pm and Saturday hours are normally 8.30 or 9am to 5 or 5.30pm. On Sundays, many of the larger shops in the city centre now open