The first rule of any travel guide is that it be compact enough to fit in a pocket in need be. Even the Rough Guides or Lonely Planet Guides can be far too large to be something that I’d like to tote around. Fortunately this guide is eminently totable.
Amsterdam is a city that Ingrid, my wife, and I visit at least twice a year for several weeks at a time as it’s a important venue for Ingrid to do purchasing for the Estate, be it wool for our weavers or liquors for the Pub. I don’t consider us to be tourists anymore but rather part-time residents, but even we can’t possibly know everything interesting here.
The Irreverent Guides are a successful attempt by Frommer’s, one of the Major Players in this business, to create a hipper, less dry style. I’d say that they’ve succeeded based on this guide. Now let’s note that nothing is covered in any depth here as this is a guide wide and in span and fairly shallow in depth. You get, to use an area I’m familiar with, is the music scene, particularly the Classical music area. In a single page, the writer does a very nice job of giving the reader the best venues to catch this music.
The food sections on the other hand is fairly deep and covers pretty much everything a traveller needs to know from the fact the Amsterdam cafes are generally rather smoky and much of the food is both heavy and fatty. That’s not to say that you can’t find a lot of superb food provided you follow the suggestions here. Especially if you like fish, particularly herring, and smoked meats and cheeses are popular as well. You are aware that Amsterdam is really cold and raw much of the year?
What the guide does rightfully point out that the Indonesian dishes as a result of the Dutch control of that region are very popular here and are quite tasty. If you can’t get to Indonesia, do treat yourself to a rijsstafel‘ a sort of rice based buffet. Really ymmmmy!
There’s a lot of other useful information from where to stay to the lowdown on both that infamous Red Light District (the one that gave its name to all others) and a look at those hashish cafes. A fair warning though: this guide was last update a decade ago and some of the information is of course out of date including who can legally smoke in these hash cafes.
All in all an excellent guide to a city that I wholeheartedly recommend you experience at least once.
(Frommer’s, 2005)
