Review of City Walks: Amsterdam
Set of 50 Cards Helps Visitors Explore the Dutch Capital on Foot
Dec 30, 2008
Amsterdam is ideal for exploring on foot: it is compact, the majority of places of interest are within walking distance of each other and the old narrow streets are unsuitable for large vehicles, making the centre relatively traffic free.
Chronicle Books has taken these facts and developed them into City Walks: Amsterdam, a deck of 50 cards, each detailing a different self-guided walk. On the front of the card is a color map showing where the walk starts and ends, while the back gives a brief overview of the area covered and the places of interest and cafés/bars along the route. Details of how to get to the starting point on public transport are also given, although it is possible to walk here as well for most of the routes.
Walks to Suit all Interests and Physical Levels
Some of the cards have a colored rim, white for longer walks and red for shorter, making it easy for users to pick the walk that suits them – or the weather, which is notoriously temperamental in Holland.
The first few walks start in the north of the city centre, taking in Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht and Herengracht, the famous canals that form concentric half circles around Central Station. Other popular areas in the centre follow, including the Red Light District (by day and night), the Jordaan and boutique-lined Nine Streets and the Flower Market.
The deck also includes ‘themed’ walks, such as the Brown Cafés tour (these are old, often dark and smoke-stained Amsterdam bars, hence the name), the Windmill walk and the Anne Frank walk. The latter takes in some lesser-known sights relating to the author of one of the world’s most famous diaries.
For the more adventurous, there are also several walks that take the visitor out of the centre to places like the expansive Amsterdamse Bos (Amsterdam Forest), the newly developed Ijburg residential islands, the lovely Westerpark and up-and-coming Amsterdam North (reached by the free municipal ferries that shuttle back and forth across the narrow strip of water behind Central Station).
Light, Compact Format
The beauty of City Walks: Amsterdam's card format is that the entire deck is about half the size of a normal travel guide, making it light and easy to carry around. It is also possible just to take along the individual cards for the walks to be undertaken that day.
The back of the box that holds the cards claims the walks will enable users to “experience Amsterdam like a native – on foot”. While this is slightly inaccurate, as the majority of ‘natives’ use bicycles to get around, a good number of the walks do cover paths rarely trodden by tourists, and enable visitors to discover the city without the constraints of an organized tour.
While the deck's breadth of content is to be admired, perhaps the biggest criticism of City Walks: Amsterdam is the sheer number of walks in contains. Even someone visiting Amsterdam for a week or more would be hard pressed to get through even half of the walks. In this respect, it would be more useful if there were only half the number of walks, with more space dedicated to descriptions and opening times, which are currently missing, on the back of the cards.
City Walks: Amsterdam is published by Chronicle books and is available to purchase on the company’s website for $14.95. Other cities in the series include New York, San Francisco, Paris, London and Rome.
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