How to Get Around Amsterdam

Cycle. It is the fastest way across the city, the infrastructure is exceptional, and rental is cheap and everywhere. Learn the rules first: ride on the right of the bike lane, signal with an arm, use lights after dark or risk a fine, and never stop in the lane.

Trams cover the centre densely and are the easiest option if you are not cycling; buses, four metro lines and free ferries across the IJ complete the network. Tap a contactless card on and off, or buy a GVB day pass.

Walking works for the canal ring, which is compact.

From Schiphol: trains to Centraal in under twenty minutes, several an hour.

Do not drive. Parking is scarce and among the most expensive in Europe, and much of the centre is restricted.

Watch for bikes when crossing anything.

The centre is smaller than it looks

The canal belt is roughly two kilometres across, and almost everything inside it is a twenty-minute walk from almost everything else. The map misleads because the canals are concentric: following one feels like progress while taking you round the city rather than across it. Cutting through on the radial streets is consistently faster than following the water.

The trams earn their place on the longer diagonals and when it is raining, which it often is. The metro is a commuter system that happens to pass under the centre, and for a visitor it is mainly useful for crossing to the north bank or reaching the outer districts.

Cycling, and why a tourist on a bike is a hazard

Bicycles here are traffic, not recreation. The lanes are fast, busy and used by people going to work, and the most common visitor mistake is treating a bike lane as a place to stop, drift or photograph. Ride in a straight line, signal with an arm, and pull fully out of the lane to stop.

Hire is easy and the national station-hire scheme is the cheapest route, but consider whether you need one at all: inside the canal belt the distances are short enough to walk, and a bicycle becomes an object you have to lock, find and worry about. It pays off for the ring outside the centre and for the ride into Waterland.

The ferries are free, and they are the best thing in the system

Behind Centraal Station, ferries cross the IJ to Amsterdam Noord continuously and at no charge. They are ordinary public transport used by commuters, they take a few minutes, and they carry bicycles.

They are also the single best way to understand the city's geography -- the IJ is the reason Amsterdam exists and the reason the station stands where it does, and it is almost invisible from the centre because the station blocks it. The north bank is where the city has been putting its new building, so the crossing is also the quickest way to see a different Amsterdam from the seventeenth-century one.

Arriving, and the airport train

Schiphol sits south-west of the city with a railway station directly beneath the terminal, and trains reach Centraal Station in about fifteen minutes and run through the night. There is no sensible reason to take a taxi unless the luggage demands it.

The same line continues to the rest of the country, which is worth knowing on arrival: if your first night is in Rotterdam, The Hague or Utrecht, you do not need to go into Amsterdam at all.

The car problem

Driving in central Amsterdam is difficult by design. The streets are narrow, many are one-way or closed, the canals force long detours, and parking in the centre is among the most expensive in Europe. Park-and-ride sites at the edge of the city are set up for exactly this, with a transit fare bundled in.

A car makes sense for the parts of the country the train serves thinly, and for nothing inside the ring road. Hire it on the day you leave the city rather than the day you arrive.