Amsterdam

Short breaks to Amsterdam are synonymous with 24-hour living, cutting edge culture and free-thinking. The city is a traveller's mecca. Imbued with an extraordinarily generous and tolerant spirit, it's little surprise that visitors to the city come back time and time again.

Getting around town is one of Amsterdam's premium entertainments. The canal boats dotting the waterways may seem touristy, but they are an excellent way to absorb the atmosphere of the mossy, secretive canals, flanked by madly cluttered medieval houses. In winter, however, you may need to opt for ice skates.

Amsterdam is a very manageable size, and should you hire a bike, you'll find yourself constantly dismounting to explore some hidden neighbourhood.

One particularly peaceful corner is the Begijnhof, a quadrangle of 15th century almshouses, tucked well away from the crowds.

Everything that happens in Amsterdam seems to be connected to the art world, whether it's state-funded, renaissance or avant-garde.

Traditional forms of culture include the Anne Frankhuis, the evocative home of the young Jewish diarist whose family lived in a hidden apartment for two years of Nazi occupation.

The Van Gogh Museum houses a huge chunk of the artist's oeuvre, and the exhaustive Rijksmuseum charts the 'golden era' of Dutch art.

With the exception of the Hash Marihuana Hemp Museum and the eye-opening Sexmuseum, the city's cultural offerings often form a staid backdrop to Amsterdam's reputation as European capital of fun.

Fun comes in many innocuous and not-so-innocuous forms. The Jordaan district is a warren of hip drinking dens and arty cafes, and thanks to the open-minded and humorous Dutch attitude, the fabled red-light district is far less sleazy than one might expect.