h, the canal boat tour. You're gliding smooth as syrup along the city waterways, looking up through plexi at the sunny canal house gables. You and a couple dozen other international travellers are listening carefully to what the old lifer tourguide is slurring in four successive languages. Half the fun is guessing what the hell he just said. House with the heads? Huh? What heads? Approaching the intersection with Reguliersgracht your pilot slows down to a creep while your guide speeds up his spiel. "To your right you can see one two three four five six seven bridges," your guide says, and hastens to say the same in Dutch, German and French. Yep there they are, seven arched bridges lined up from here to Lijnbaansgracht. It's a sight very few people have ever seen with the naked eye: they're clicking cameras so furiously you'd think Leelee Sobieski just stripped butt naked here on the Herengracht. Then the rain comes, and you're glad you're under plexi.
The canal tours depart from various points in town, including the Damrak and the Stadhouderskade near Leidseplein. It's cool to see the city from a different angle. Just maintain a healthy skepticism of any history you get sprayed with en route. The guides are obliged to be concise, not correct.
Anne Frank Huis. Prinsengracht 263, near the Westertoren church, is the one-time office of Otto Frank's Nederlandsche Opekta company, which sold pectin for making homemade jam. The unused space in the achterhuis (behind-house) became the hiding place for Otto's family and that of his biz partner, plus one lonely dentist. They moved in there the day after the Nazis mailed out their first oproeping (call-up) for Jews to be sent to "labor" camps in the east. The Franks had fled here from Germany in the 1930s, believing Amsterdam to be a safe haven. Otto's younger daughter Anne kept a diary in that building — a diary which later, after her death at Bergen Belsen, would come to be edited, sanitized, and world-famous. If you're an Anne freak, go to the in-house bookstore there and splurge on a copy of the Critical Edition — it contains all three versions of Anne's diary in parallel, so you can compare the original, self-revised, and published texts. The self-directed museum is well worth a visit. But it is somewhere between depressing and devastating. My advice is to do it first, and then go do something else to cheer yourself up. Note: a lot of visitors call this building "Anne Frank's House." That's not what it is. This was their schuilplaats or hiding place, where they concealed themselves in relative luxury compared to most hiders of the time. Anne Frank's actual home was in a modern apartment complex in the Rivierenbuurt.
Rijksmuseum — and the "Night Watch". A total renovation of the Rijksmuseum building began in the fall of 2003 and is expected to last until 2008. Early on they found a lot of asbestos and needed to close the museum completely while it was removed. For the time being, the famous masterpieces will remain on view in the "Philips Wing" of the museum. This includes the world-famous Rembrandt masterpiece commonly known as the Nachtwacht or "Night Watch" — basically a picture of a gang of VIP types standing around in the dark dressed up like soldiers. In December 2003, surrounded by onlookers, press and TV crews, the painting was very very carefully removed, encased, and transported to the nearby Philips wing. The Dutch attitude toward this painting has changed in the last few hundreds of years. At one time they just chopped off both sides of it to make it fit in a smaller space. Today they believe it is approximately the most important work of art in the world. And by surrounding it with preparatory educational exhibits and a hushed chamber of reverence, they've even managed to persuade millions of people that "Night Watch" is actually a good painting. Personally I think it's crap. To me, art is something that should strike you or touch you or captivate you. Just being taught that something is great doesn't do it for me. They have plenty of cool paintings in the Rijksmuseum collection that wipe the floor with the Nacthwacht. The Vermeers are great. And I liked de Dreigende Swan (the threatening swan) so much I bought the mousepad of it, it's still on my desk. But my very favorite stuff from the Rijksmuseum are those dogs-in-church paintings by De Witte. I hope they put at least one of those in the Philips Wing.
Van Gogh Museum. Whatever. If you like Vincent then gogh.
Heineken Museum. On the Stadhouderskade. At the end of the museum tour you're invited to sample some of their product, so a lot of people dig it cuz they like free beer.
Buying klompen. Many visitors like to buy a pair of cute little wooden shoes as a souvenir of having been to the Netherlands. But for those who really want to embarrass themselves there's a shop on the Damstraat with a huge wooden shoe outside, and people take photos of each other sitting in it.
The flower market. People are pretty serious about flowers here, and they expect you to be too. The tram conductors even announce the Koningsplein stop as "flower market" in English. The bloemenmarkt is a stretch of the Singel between Koningsplein and the Munt tower, packed with flower and tulip bulb shops that have actually grown out of floating barges on the canal. Some of the vendors profess the ability to legally ship tulip bulbs to your address in the States without violating any agricultural import laws. I dunno about that, but this is a good place to buy bulbs, plants and flowers and competitive prices. One of these days I'm gonna buy some tulip bulbs and boil them for dinner, just like people used to do during the Hunger Winter.
Walking through Amsterdam's amazing red light district. Well, if you don't try it, you'll never know how freakin boring it is. Basically you just head east from the Dam along Damstraat until you get to the first canal, then turn left, and occasionally zigzag in and out of the side alleys. When you come to some narrow shopwindows staffed by women pretending they want to have sex with you, you're here. Expect to encounter at least some desperate people who hope to gain advantage from you. The area surrounding the oldest church is kinda pretty architecturally, and a bit less creepy if you go during daylight hours. We are strongly advised not to take pictures of the window-girlies.
If you're not too tired after you're done doing all those things, there are some other things you could do. This won't be an exhaustive list, I'll just make a few suggestions.
The other canal boat tour. Run by the St Nicolaas Boat Club, which last time I checked operates out of the Boom Chicago bar at Leidseplein. They have smaller open-air boats formerly used to deliver dairy or flowers to market. There's something nice about the absence of plexiglas. And the tour guides, while not necessarily more accurate, tend to be friendlier.
One thing you'll see is that not only tourists enjoy cruising the canals. Especially in the summer, lots of folks ride around in boats big and small during the early evening. I once had the pleasure of touring the whole Centrum in a tiny dinghy with an outboard.
The Verzetsmuseum. Plantage Kerklaan, across from the Artis Zoo, near tram 9. Literally this is the "resistance" museum, and its exhibits, in English and Dutch, will hold a chilling fascination for anyone interested in what life was like here during the Nazi occupation. The story of the museum is about how some Dutch people chose to work against the Nazis in secret.
Anne Frank's actual house. Merwedeplein 37, near the corner of Waalstraat in the "river district" of South Amsterdam — take tram 12 or 25 to Waalstraat and walk one block south. This is not a museum or anything, it's just one in a row of apartment buildings in a triangle — and somebody lives there, so for fucksake please don't go up and ring the doorbell. But standing in Merwedeplein will help you imagine who Anne was. She played hopscotch here on this sidewalk. These trees had only just been planted when she lived here, because it was a brand new (and fairly upscale) housing development, far from the more working-class Joodsche Wijk. At the vertex of the Merwedeplein triangle you see de Wolkenkrabber, Amsterdam's first real skyscraper. The thing that touches me about this place is that it does not seem old. The architecture is modern, and at least for me that removes some of the illusion of distance to that time. People have been trying to figure out some kind of memorial to put here, but as of this writing they haven't been able to agree on what to do or who should pay for it.
The outdoor markets. If you're the sort of person who likes poking around in fleamarkety places, this is a good city for you. Amsterdam has several open-air marketplaces, some happening every day and some only on weekends. There are daily markets in Albert Cuypstraat in the Pijp (south of the Heineken museum) and at Dapperstraat in Oost, a couple blocks east of the Tropenmusem. Those are more neighborhood oriented and often have cheaper prices. The daily market at Waterlooplein is more famous and centrally located, having its own Metro stop. Waterlooplein is in the old Joodse Wijk next to the Amstel river, the Stopera building, the Moses & Aaron church and the Rembrandt museum. Vendors there 
sell a mix of new and second-hand stuff, including clothing, jewelry, hats, military surplus apparel, leather stuff, wigs, CDs and LPs, old stereo and computer equipment, and a goodly selection of just plain junk. My friends and I even found a pair of brand new handcuffs there. There are a couple of snack stands too. The adjacent (and freakin ugly) "Stopera" (stadhuis + opera) building came to exist in the 1980s — a combination city hall and music theater. Inside you can use the post office, file your change of address, attend lunchtime concerts, or get married. Historian Geert Mak rightly points out that it has all the architectural charm of a chair from Ikea. Back in early February 1941 Waterlooplein was the scene of violent clashes between ordinary people and Dutch Nazi militia. When one of the Nazis (Hendrik Koot) died from injuries sustained in a brawl, the German occupiers used the excuse to institute a number of punitive roundups of local Jews.
On a Saturday morning, try going to the Noordermarkt, on the Jordaan side of Prinsengracht near Brouwersgracht, at the base of the north church. Organic farmers sell fresh produce and dairy and syrups and juices at one end. At the other end, it's just a fleamarket. Also on Saturdays the Lindenmarkt street market happens a couple blocks away from Noordermarkt. Even if you don't buy anything, it's a nice excuse to take a walk through that section of town. In late February 1941 the Noordermarkt was one of the gathering places for workers organizing a city-wide general strike against the Nazi abuses mentioned above. The resulting heroic but short-lived strike (the Februaristaking) is celebrated every year on 25 February at the Dokwerker monument near Waterlooplein.
Winkelen. Just go shopping. There are some offbeat little shops scattered around town. Some are in the Jordaan, and in the narrow streets between the Jordaan and the Damrak. Others are scattered along the Harlemmerstraat and Harlemmerdijk. Some keep regular hours. Some are open if the proprietor can drag themselves out of bed that day. If you like walking and looking and maybe buying, you could find some good and unusual things. For example, good-looking eyeglass frames are relatively cheap here compared to the US. They also have some cool footwear in Amsterdam — most of the shoe stores are in the busier shopping streets like Kalverstraat and Nieuwendijk.
Just walk. Pray for a clear day, then get away from the crowds and just wander some of the quieter areas of town. Here's one idea — take a glance at the map, then try making your way without looking at it again, from Waterlooplein through the old eilanden area, past the Montalbantoren, to the Schreierstoren by Prins Hendrikkade. In so doing you may get totally lost, but it will be a nice kind of lost. Bring a camera maybe.
Kiss someone on a bridge. It's easy and it brings you good luck, I promise.
