For the last few days I’ve been in Ams­ter­dam, tak­ing a break from writ­ing and talk­ing about City. I’d for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful Ams­ter­dam is.

For the first time I vis­it­ed the Muse­um Geelvinck-Hin­lopen, a late sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry man­sion fac­ing the Heren­gracht.

With its seclud­ed gar­den and lux­u­ri­ous rooms, it pro­vid­ed a mem­o­rable glimpse into a time when Ams­ter­dam was one of the wealth­i­est cities on the plan­et. But as I was walk­ing round, I noticed a small white plaque on a piano in the Blue Room. In won­der­ful­ly ornate script, it pro­claimed that the mak­ers of that piano were John Broad­wood & Sons, who were based in Great Pul­teney Street, near Gold­en Square, Lon­don — the city that would soon take over the role as the com­mer­cial cap­i­tal of the world.

If you’re plan­ning a trip to Ams­ter­dam, I would rec­om­mend Proev­er­ij 274 as a great place to eat (thanks to Matt Muir for that tip), and for a real­ly superb cup of cof­fee, Scream­ing Beans. They sell deli­cious almond cook­ies too.

I for­got to men­tion before I went away that the Guardian pub­lished my review of Taras Grescoe’s Straphang­er, an excel­lent whis­tle-stop tour of world cities and their trans­port sys­tems. Appar­ent­ly, Amer­i­cans now spend nine years of their lives sit­ting in their cars, and the pol­lu­tion they pro­duce kills 30,000 US cit­i­zens each year. You can read the review here.

When I got back from Ams­ter­dam, a very nice review of City was wait­ing for me, by Annick Labeca on Urban Lab Glob­al Cities. In it she admits to hav­ing read the book four times! I’m impressed… Also on City, I did a Q & A with Sherin Wing for Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine. That was post­ed online yes­ter­day and you can read it here. There’s also a slideshow of some of my urban pho­tos at the end.

Oh, and here are some of my pho­tos of Ams­ter­dam on Flickr. Enjoy…