And so two years, one month and twenty-eight days after arriving to live and work in Amsterdam, tomorrow I leave. It’s not a final farewell yet, as I’ll be here on and off for the next couple of months to finish off some work commitments, but as of tomorrow I’ll be living in Geneva once again.

Before the memories start to go cold I thought it would be a good idea to commit to paper a few of the things I’ve enjoyed most about my time in this wonderful city. This post can be seen as part travel tips, part personal reminiscence….and all, of course, just the opinions of one person.

I should start by saying that I have LOVED living in this city and under different circumstances would love to remain here long term. The single biggest contributor to the wonderful quality of life here is the predominance of the bicycle as a mode of transport. Of course there are also the buildings, the people, the culture, etc… but it’s the bikes that make it special for me. But other than that there are many specific places that I want to mention and recommend.

In no particular order…

I realise now that this list is getting to be longer than I intended. I think I’ll leave it there for now on the basis that I’ll surely have one reason or another to mention various other places when recounting other tales at other times. Others that could have been on the list include the fabulous Turkish mediterranean cuisine at Orontes West, drinking with the locals at cafe Int Aepjen on Zeedijk, renting a boat from Boaty.nl to enjoy a few hours pottering around on the canals, an intriguing few hours in the Amsterdam Historic Museum, a late lunch at Cafe Langendijk by the windmill at the Brouwerij ‘t IJ, a tasty three-course meal for EUR 5 at the MKZ squat, sawdust on the floor in one of Amsterdam’s oldest bars, the Hoppe on Spui, ….. Okay! I’ll stop now!

(By the way, for lots more tips like the above, i.e. from people living and working in Amsterdam, I recommend the Spotted by Locals blog, for which Amsterdam was the first city featured.)

And just in case I’m being too positive about this city, I can think of three things (but just three) that annoyed me on a regular basis and that I won’t miss at all: