3-Day Amsterdam Weekend for Couples

The Nine Streets stitch the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht together with small independent shops, bookshops and bridges, and a café whenever one of you wants coffee. When they run out, cross the Prinsengracht into the Jordaan: narrow houses, flower boxes, quiet courtyards. Arrive late afternoon, when the light runs low along the water and the gables turn amber. You'll pass the Westerkerk and the Anne Frank House; if you want to go inside the house, its timed tickets release online in advance, so decide before you travel.

When the shopping streets wear thin, slip through the gate off the Spui into the Begijnhof, a medieval courtyard of houses around a green, one of them among the oldest wooden houses in the city. It is startlingly quiet ten metres from the crowds, and free. People live here, so keep your voices low; the hush is the whole point.

Its Gallery of Honour runs the Golden Age down one long room: Vermeer's quiet interiors, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt's Night Watch waiting at the end. The trick for two is to refuse to see it all. Take that gallery plus one wing you both care about, delftware and dollhouses, ship models or the Asian pavilion, then stop. Two well-spent hours beat four resentful ones. Book a timed ticket online; walk-up entry is unreliable on weekends and wet days.

Across the Museumplein, the Van Gogh Museum holds the largest collection of his work anywhere, hung as one chronological arc through his life: smaller, more focused and kinder to tired legs. Entry is strictly timed with online tickets, so choose it in advance rather than swapping on the day.

Walk the Amstel embankment to the Magere Brug, the white wooden drawbridge, in the last daylight, and stay while its small lights come on. Then get on the canals rather than beside them. An evening boat through the canal belt is the one piece of tourist infrastructure worth every euro: lit gables, bridges strung with lights, the whole city slowed to the pace of the water. Boats range from big glass-roofed ones to small open ones with a dozen seats. Book a small one for a sunset or after-dark departure.

Trade the canal view for a canal house. Museum Van Loon is a preserved patrician home of family portraits and period rooms, and behind it waits something almost nobody expects: a formal garden with a coach house. One unhurried hour, just the right size for a final day.