Rooms and doors of De Baarsjes
The typical home here is a well-built apartment in a four- or five-storey block, reached by a shared stairwell with a row of letterboxes and bells at the street door. Many have been rented out to visitors through the usual platforms, and they tend to be more spacious and brighter than flats in the old centre, with proper double beds, modern kitchens and balconies over quiet inner gardens. There are few hotels. Evenings are calm: the main streets have a scattering of bars that close around midnight, and the residential blocks go quiet well before that. A reader returning from dinner in the centre on the tram, or by bicycle along the canal, is back in a neighbourhood that feels far from the crowds. Neighbours here notice very little, because a visitor at the door at eleven is ordinary in a street full of young households and shared flats.
