Where do locals actually go in Amsterdam?

Start your workday at OBA Oosterdok, the central public library at Oosterdokskade 143, open 8am to 10pm every day. The free wifi holds a video call better than most canal-house Airbnbs, where thick 17th-century walls block the router, and the top-floor restaurant sells soup and sandwiches at canteen prices while the IJ ferries hum below the windows. During the January and June exam weeks, students claim the long desks by 10am, so arrive early. Cafés are harder. Many on Kinkerstraat in Oud-West and Ferdinand Bolstraat in De Pijp put 'no laptops' stickers on the door, usually for weekends, and the staff at those places enforce them. Read the window before you order a €4 koffie verkeerd. The Concertgebouw runs free lunchtime concerts on Wednesdays at 12.30pm, roughly September to June, and half the audience comes from offices around Museumplein. The queue on Van Baerlestraat forms by noon.

Stay in Oost or Oud-West and do your grocery shopping at the market, not at Albert Heijn. Dappermarkt in the Dapperbuurt runs Monday to Saturday, roughly 9am to 5pm: stallholders call out prices in Dutch and Turkish, a bowl of mandarins costs about €1, and the fish stand fries kibbeling to order, so the oil smell reaches halfway down Dapperstraat. Javastraat, five minutes east, has Turkish bakeries and Surinamese takeaways where a broodje pom costs less than a cappuccino on Prinsengracht. Ten Katemarkt on Ten Katestraat is the Oud-West version, smaller and cheaper. Skip Albert Cuypmarkt in De Pijp as a daily shop: over the 2010s its stalls shifted toward stroopwafels and phone cases for tourists. For a one-month lease, pick a flat within ten minutes of Dappermarkt or Ten Katemarkt.

Locals spend their evenings on the water in summer and retreat to brown cafés from October. Hannekes Boom on the Dijksgracht, seven minutes from Centraal behind NEMO, fills its terrace with people from the Oosterdok offices after 5pm on weekdays, and some of them tie up small boats at the jetty. De Ceuvel in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam-Noord, is a café among old houseboats on a former shipyard; the free GVB ferry to Buiksloterweg gets you most of the way, and then it's about a 6-minute bike ride. On 17 October it was 12.7°C at 7pm but felt nearer 9°C, which means terraces empty after dark. That's when Amsterdammers move inside to Café Hoppe on Spui or Café De Druif on Rapenburgerplein, both smelling of spilled Heineken and damp wool coats. The Friday vrijdagmiddagborrel starts there around 5pm and has spilled onto the pavement by 6.30pm.