Rooms and doors of De Pijp
This is a neighbourhood of doorbells rather than lobbies. Hotels are few and small, a couple of design properties near the market and along the canal edge, so most readers who write from De Pijp are in a rented flat, a friend's apartment or a long-stay studio two or three floors above a shop. The staircases are a nineteenth-century economy: steep, straight, and lit by a timer switch that expires halfway up. Residents are young, international and nocturnal, which gives a late arrival perfect cover. On a Friday night Gerard Douplein stays full until the terrace chairs are stacked, and a well-dressed woman crossing it with a single bag is one more guest on the way to one more dinner. By two on a Tuesday morning the same streets are quiet enough to hear a tram turn on Ceintuurbaan, and she is simply a resident walking home. Either way the quarter asks no questions, and our women have never needed it to.


