Five Amsterdam spots we'd send a friend.

A village in the western port that was supposed to be demolished in the seventies. Artists squatted it, never left, and turned it into a free state of studios, sculpture gardens, and parties in a deconsecrated church. Cycle out through the docklands and check the programme before you go. If you can time your trip with the Landjuweel festival in late July, do that. Nothing else in the Netherlands feels like it.

Europe's biggest flea market, one weekend a month in two old shipbuilding halls on the NDSM wharf. Hundreds of stalls of furniture, records, cameras, and clothes, sold by people clearing out their attics rather than traders. Arrive when the doors open for the good stuff, or in the last hour for the prices. Bring cash, take the free ferry, and check the dates before you plan around it.

An industrial pocket of Noord where the city keeps its best nights. Oedipus brews the beer and houses Echobox, the community radio station that picked up where Red Light Radio left off: order a pint and watch the broadcast happen live. Around the corner, Skatecafé serves a proper dinner beside a working skate ramp, then turns into a party. Come Thursday to Saturday, when everything is open.

The market Amsterdammers use when they want food, not a photo of food. Surinamese lunch counters, Turkish bakeries, and produce at half the Albert Cuyp price, six days a week in Oost. When you're done, walk one street over to Javastraat and follow the tokos and grocers east through the Indische Buurt. Go hungry and order the roti.

A jenever distillery in a nineteenth-century pump house on a pond in the middle of Flevopark, five minutes past the east end of Javastraat. More than a hundred house-made jenevers and liqueurs, a terrace right on the water, and doors that close by early evening: this is where an Amsterdam afternoon ends, not where the night starts. Order something you can't pronounce and watch the herons work the pond.