Sloterdijk, and the Value of Visiting Just Outside the City Center

When I visited Amsterdam last year, I had no real restrictions on where I stayed. I wasn't visiting anyone, or going to any scheduled events, and I was traveling alone. I ended up staying not in the historic city center, or the eastern end of the city, where the majority of tourist spots are. Instead, I stayed here near Sloterdijk station in the northwest of the city.

As you may be able to see from the photo, Sloterdijk has some advantages: a bike lane (front), bus and tram connections (below), mainline rail and metro connections (above), and, not coincidentally, a fairly cheap fairly nice hotel close by:

(proof you can see the station and metro line from my hotel)

Certainly this was not the only choice I could have made. But I want to spend this post talking a little about why I made it, and generally why I think it's a good model for visiting a city you want to explore in an urbanist manner.

1. Transit (and Human-Powered Transportation) Rules

I just mentioned all those transit connections. There are also a host of bikes, which I didn't use but most Amsterdammers do.

And while I didn't bike, I did walk a lot. Basically, it's easy to get places from Sloterdijk, even though Sloterdijk itself might not be considered a major destination or a central place. Choosing a place like this, from which you can access places you might want to get to, but which isn't itself so crowded with others because it is not itself a main destination, is in my opinion a cheat code to visiting busy cities like Amsterdam. Using transit, bikes, and feet to go places is fun, fairly easy, and (for me at least) fairly relaxing--and it frees you to stay somewhere just an inch or so off the beaten path (though not the bike path, which goes right there).

2. Experience More Normal Life

I didn't take a bunch of photos of Amsterdammers doing normal things because that would have felt weird and creepy. But staying in Sloterdijk meant that the places I was walking to near my hotel--the grocery store I went to, the businesses I strolled past, the little lanes the pedestrian paths wound their way between--were filled with pretty much normal Dutch life (at least for Amsterdam) and not just things geared to tourists. 

For some, this may not be a draw. But if you're hoping to see not just "Amsterdam(TM)" but what it might be like to be someone living in Amsterdam, to understand not just the tourist model of urbanism but how it might help people in the actual city, this is helpful--and fun.

3. Proximity to Other Places

I didn't just go to Amsterdam on that trip to the Netherlands. I went to Haarlem too!

And well, one plus of staying outside the city center proper is that you are, or at least can be, close to another city! Sloterdijk is one stop closer to Haarlem on most lines than Amsterdam Centraal, so by staying a bit outside of the Amsterdam center, I actually had an easier time getting to Haarlem.

Generalizing and drawing on other trips I've done: staying just a bit to one side can make it easy and fun to go see what's further to that side! 

Obviously Sloterdijk is not rural; it's still Amsterdam, and those very transit connections that I valued mean that it's tied into Amsterdam pretty well. The point here isn't to avoid the city entirely (how urbanist would that be?) but to try something a little outside the most obvious urban center and, by doing so, unlock some additional benefits. I enjoyed it, and I recommend a similar approach to any other visit to a major city.