#59: Anatomy of an Amsterdam Trip
Yuletide sweets! Art deco interiors! Swoon-worthy designer vintage!
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In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, explorer Marco Polo paints vignettes of strange and far-flung places to Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan - metropolises later revealed to be not separate cities but a fantastical mosaic of his home, Venice.
“Newly arrived and quite ignorant of the language of the Levant, Marco Polo could express himself only by drawing objects from his baggage—drums, salt fish, necklaces of wart hog's teeth—and pointing to them with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder or of horror, imitating she bay of the jackal, the hoot of the owl.”
I read some of the book during our three-day-long stint in the Venice of the North this week, and thought it a whimsical starting point for the inevitable round-up—inevitable not (only) because of my duty as a weekly newsletter writer but because our trip quickly proclaimed itself one worthy of sharing. Amsterdam in the summer is stunning (I was there in May and wish I had more time, hence the return), but the city in December is cosy, festive, and deliciously quiet.
If I were Marco Polo and you Kublai Khan, my show-and-tell would involve a paper bag carpeted with icing sugar a donut (since eaten) shed; a silk Yohji Yamamoto skirt; a cookbook I will gift a Sagittarius friend; two boxes of cookies to be enjoyed with coffee after lunch on Christmas day; and a Miffy doll for a new, tiny human being.
Thankfully we speak the same language and I can do more than just gesticulate. In other words, dear reader, I have recommendations for you, and I think you’re going to like them.
Stay, shop, and eat: Carmen
If you follow a certain breed of fashion/art/food woman you’ll be well-acquainted with the artful interiors at Carmen: the painfully photogenic guesthouse, shop, and café, populated with stunning burled wood cabinets and stacks of meticulously curated books; a curation of the coolest independent brands across New York, Paris, and its native city; and comically perfect slices of their famous chocolate cake.
For transparency, I reached out to the eponymous Carmen a while back about interviewing her for a story; she kindly offered us a stay and we planned this trip around it.
Now, it’s going to be hard to visit Amsterdam and stay elsewhere: where else will you get to help yourself to said cake at all hours, or recharge (read: watch Lost) in a stunning living room inspired by the Louisana Museum of Modern Art’s famous Giacometti hall? I’ll link the story when it’s out, rather than go into further detail, but the place is really as lovely as it looks, and comes with a delicious breakfast spread.
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Snack: Eetsalon Van Dobben
Months ago, I interviewed designer Christian Heikoop of the bag brand Maeden and he name-checked Van Dobben, an institution of a snack bar where locals are served croquette sandwiches alongside tall glasses of milk. We stopped by in the evening (fortuitously: the staff say lunchtimes are hectic nowadays) for a single beef croquette, as my curiosity trumped an lack of appetite. The oblong nugget, dipped in a good dollop of fluro-yello mustard, was delicious, and an unimpeachable way to line one’s stomach for several pints of Hertog Jan.
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Shop: Athenaeum Boekhandel Haarlem
Yes, they stock Isolarii, but this lovely book store also has an unusually large selection of zines. Perfect for niche but thoughtful gifts.
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Bathe: Sauna Deco
Ivan and I are now spa obsessed, and that is fully the doing of Sauna Deco, a surreal gem sitting behind an ornate wooden door on Herengracht. The space, which opened its doors in the 70s, rehoused the art deco furnishings of Paris’ Le Bon Marché when the department store was stripped in favour of more modern look. We paid €28.50 to flit from sauna to lounge (kitted out with refreshments, books and board games) and back to sauna, in awe—the ideal way to spend the colder, fast-darkening hours between lunch and dinner. Note, they’re mixed and don’t allow swimsuits.
Venture below the paywall for the best vintage store I’ve visited in years (!), an art deco café and sauna (respectively), and a perfect wine bar.
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