Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a city built on contradictions that somehow resolve into coherence: 17th-century merchant wealth visible in every canal house, a cannabis policy that is matter-of-fact rather than recreational, the finest collection of Dutch Golden Age painting in the world in a city that fits inside Central Park, and a cycling culture so complete that the 800,000 bicycles outnumber the residents. The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum are the artistic anchors. The Anne Frank House is the moral one. The Jordaan neighborhood — a grid of narrow canals lined with independent shops and brown cafés — is the city at its most livable. Amsterdam rewards slower visitors who resist the temptation to treat it as a one-night party stop; two or three days in a canal house apartment, cycling to the markets in the morning, is the correct version.