Seeking out fun in Amsterdam and Brussels

Ink Hotel Amsterdam—MGallery Collection is as perfectly located as a city hotel gets. It’s a nine-minute walk from Grand Centraal Station, eight minutes to Dam Square, and ten minutes from the heart of Jordaan which is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in town, yet chock-a-block with up-to-the-minute shopping. The hotel’s vibe inside also takes the “living like a local” idea to the next level through attention to detail in expected and unexpected places.

The experience of a stay in this transformed former newspaper office begins with a sunny lobby that warms and welcomes the guest even during a downpour. If you are not sure how to spend your time in town, look out your window and then get a good look at the wall for inspiration. Although every room is outfitted with maps and “what’s on” publications, the most distinctive decorative attribute of the décor is a whimsical blackboard wall. Little drawings make up a larger map with a few hidden insider tips hiding in plain sight in markets, quirky eateries, and other curiosities. The mixology at its Pressroom bar has the city vibe down, evidenced by the Inkredible, its aptly named signature cocktail.

In the morning, the hotel restaurant offers a breakfast buffet that could be a mini-Amsterdam food tour. Inside the restaurant, anything from pastry, to chocolate, cheese, meats, produce, and preserves are painstakingly labelled with information on the producers and location within the Netherlands.

However, if you want to get a hearty taste of the city on your first day, or during a short stay, we still love Eating Europe (eatingeurope.com/about-us), whose tours have proliferated through Europe since its inception in 2011. In the years we first covered the Jordaan tour in Lucire, it continues to persevere and is adding more neighbourhood tours to its Amsterdam roster later in 2024.

Thanks to the Jordaan neighbourhood’s central location, humble roots, trend-setting retail renaissance, and history as an international crossroads, this tour remains a cornerstone for Eating Europe. Although the company’s tour guides are uniformly excellent and well versed on the complexities of each neighbourhood, we recommend Katya, who personally makes sure everybody gets a taste at each stop, answers questions, makes great gift purchase recommendations, points out “must dos” for meals beyond the tour, and highlights several poignant sites not directly related to food, such as the standing stones commemorating Jewish citizens taken from their homes in World War II.

In Jordaan, you can throw a rock and hit an enticing second-hand clothing shop. However, if you want to take home something that you can only find in the Netherlands, seek out Tessa Koops, whose styles, textiles, and vibe stand up well to some of Italy’s top designers. However, there’s room for everybody in Koops’ festive shop thanks to her democratic sizing. You may get lucky and see the designer in action interacting with her regular customers.

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Top: Tessa Koops’ boutique in Amsterdam. Above: The centre of Bruxelles.

One can be a first-time visitor to Brussels and already know it is one of the world’s chocolate capitals, the de facto capital of the European Union, and the official capital of Belgium. It gets a bad rap by some as a boring city, but ignore the naysayers. If you are into culture, there are numerous museums in and around the city centre celebrating classic art, modern art, decorative arts, and the artistry of the comic book. Every second or third shop in the city centre sells artisanal chocolate in seductively gorgeous packages with painstakingly detailed labels indicating the cacao beans’ origins. As you would expect, there are also numerous waffle and frites (a.k.a. fries) shops interwoven between the chocolate boutiques and restaurants.

Secret Food Tours can prove itself to be a wise first-day activity. Many beer and chocolate tours abound, but this tour also brings the meat and potatoes—and then some. Mr Chan, the guide on my Brussels tour, presented a small but well curated mix of picks to present a definitive taste of the holy trinity of traditional eats (chocolate, frites, waffles) along with craft beer and a few surprises. However, between stops, he also pointed out several quirky cafés that underscore Brussels’ origin story as the birthplace and capital of comic strips and books along with the murals making up the city’s Comic Book Route.

Fittingly, the tour begins at the Auguste Orts statue near a square that once served as the city’s main market a few generations ago, and ironically across the road from a McDonald’s whose fries would probably be an afterthought, if the lines at the frites shops are any indication. Although there are many rustic taverns, some that are a few centuries old, Chan is particularly fond of the Librarie Manga Café and the playfully gothic Bar Le Cercueil, whose whimsical drink menu suggests the talents behind comic books inspire the management and bartenders.

While one will find many of France’s top fashion stores in the city centre, second-hand clothing shops (many of which rival those in Paris, Milano, and other European fashion capitals) can be found on or just off Anspachlaan. My personal favourite is City Store Vintage, which had an especially superb collection of big-name European handbags and shoes. Other treasure troves worth checking out include Les Petits Riens, Bernard Gavilan, and Foxhole. Like its Paris counterparts in the Marais district, Melting Pot Kilo Store sells clothing by weight. •

Above, from top: A pâtisserie in Bruxelles. Inside the Brasserie Ommegang. On the city’s Comic Book Route.

Elyse Glickman is US west coast editor of Lucire and the co-creator of Lucire Rouge.

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