The streets at night
The centre runs on two clocks. By day the Kalverstraat and the Nine Streets belong to shoppers, and the canal boats sail full; after eleven the tourists thin out, the bells of the Zuiderkerk carry further over the water, and the grachten turn black and glossy under the bridge lights. That second clock is ours. Hotel desks stay staffed through the night, night buses gather behind the station, and nobody on a canal-ring pavement at one in the morning has any reason to look twice at anyone else. What the old core lacks is space. Rooms in converted merchant houses are compact, staircases are steep enough to be called ladders, and ceilings sometimes slope right over the bed. Describe yours when you write, a garret with a view of the water or a suite in one of the big houses, and the woman who comes will have pictured it before she crosses the first bridge.
