Cycling down the River Amstel, humming a jaunty tune while waving at groups of men engaged in some kind of mildly competitive boat race, it seems nigh-on unbelievable that I was in London last night.
A mere 15 hours ago I was grumpily making my way to Liverpool Street station on Friday evening to catch the train to Harwich after a, shall we say, “challenging” week. A ferry ride, metro and swift train later, it’s Saturday morning and I am pausing to take a selfie by the most quintessentially Dutch windmill I have ever seen; stopping for lunch at a trendy gastro-Indonesian restaurant on the waterfront; cycling around the hold-your-breath quiet manmade lake in the Zuid-Oost district’s Gaasperpark.
For me, there are few cities that can rival Amsterdam for sheer good looks or charisma. The canals! The gabled houses! The bridges! Even getting out of the confines of the Canal Ring for a change doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm; in fact, like reaching the deeper stage of love that follows the honeymoon period’s initial rush of chemical attraction, I find myself becoming even more enamoured with this Dutch duchess.
What can’t this showstopper of a capital do? Let you indoors without daily Covid testing, as it turns out
She can do pastoral perfection too, you say, with verdant green fields dotted by brown cows just a 20-minute cycle downriver? And she’s equally down to throw on some urban streetwear in the trendy former shipyard-turned-cultural-hotspot NDSM on Amsterdam Noord? What can’t this showstopper of a capital do?
Let you indoors without daily Covid testing, as it turns out. The Netherlands may have dropped its stringent quarantine rules for vaccinated travellers but its separate health pass app – needed to gain entry to restaurants, bars, museums and other attractions –does not currently recognise the UK’s proof of vaccination (yet another thing to blame on Brexit). It means that British visitors must take a rapid antigen test every 24 hours, uploading their negative result to the CoronaCheck app to get indoor privileges. You can sit at outdoor terraces without it but as the autumn chill draws in, you’re likely to have to do some swabbing.
The Riekermolen windmill is ripe for selfies
(Getty/iStockphoto)
I was all set to find the process arduous and annoying, stamping my foot in the true fashion of Roald…
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