Netherlands
As its name suggests, this cafe specialises mainly in Belgian beers, but it also has a respectable number of Dutch ones for you to sample as well. If you can't find something you fancy in its list of 10 draught beers and nearly 200 bottled ones you probably don't like beer. Good food with imaginative vegetarian options in the dagschotel (daily menu). A great place to relax.
Oudegracht 196.Telephone 030 231 2666
Although now just a café, the Winkel van Sinkel was the first department store opened in the Netherlands. It's a striking building standing by the Oudegracht with its façade featuring four giant cast-iron statues which were fabricated in England, as nowhere else had the technology at the start of the 19th century to produce them.
They were so large that they had to be transported to the store by water but unfortunately they were so heavy that the crane off-loading them from the boat collapsed under their weight, earning the statues the nicknames "these fallen English women" and "the English whores."
The fame of Anton Sinkel's shop spread throughout the Netherlands, inspiring a song which (roughly translated) goes:
At the big shop of Sinkel's/All things can be bought/Sweeties and shandies/Undies for dandies/Needles for knitting/And tablets for shitting.
www.dewinkelvansinkel.nl/
Oudegracht 158
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