The city's biggest flea market is hosted the first weekend of each month in and around a gigantic warehouse in the industrial area of NDSM in Amsterdam Noord. I love to snuff around the hundreds of stalls to find unusual props. Taking the boat to cross the IJ and leaving the old centre behind is very refreshing. Make sure to also have a drink in Noorderlicht while the sun sets.

Eclectic brewery for IPA's, music and art.

Banging my head against the ceiling on the first floor doesn’t stop me from drinking a coffee in café Latei at Nieuwmarkt. I love it here, especially on rainy days, which is most days in the Netherlands. This small cosy café filled with a thousand colours warms me up.

With 24 hr licence to function as club, nights easily turn into days here. De school houses a coffee and a restaurant place, you can literally enter Friday and leave Sunday. :0 Quite in weekdays with great coffee, atmosphere and natural light

The Oostvaardersdijk is huge dike that protect the polder of Flevoland from being flooded. It's near the city of Almere that was founded in 1975 on the just recovered land of the Flevopolder. It is a great place to see the skyline of Amsterdam and look out over the Markermeer, the former Zuiderzee. When you turn around you can look down in the polder on an impressive group of modern windmills, in the distance you see the city of Almere. This is Holland at it's core: endless flats with the endless skies you know from Seventeenth century painting. You can drive the Oostvaardersdijk north to Lelystad and cross the lake to Enkhuizen and back to Amsterdam. On the way you drive past Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve, a large area of marshes and wild land in the Flevopolder, where they introduced wild horses and prehistoric cattle.