Noord vs De Pijp: The Two Amsterdams Nobody Warned You About
I grew up in De Pijp. My parents moved there in the eighties when it was still a working-class neighbourhood — cheap rents, Turkish bakeries, the Albert Cuyp market as genuine food infrastructure rather than tourist attraction. I moved to Noord six years ago because I couldn’t afford De Pijp anymore, and nobody could.
These two neighbourhoods tell you most of what you need to know about how Amsterdam has changed and what it still is. They are worth understanding properly.
De Pijp: what it became
De Pijp is now expensive, international, and extremely pleasant if you can afford it. The Albert Cuyp market still runs Monday to Saturday — the longest street market in the Netherlands, about 300 stalls. It’s still genuinely useful for produce, cheese, and stroopwafels, though the tourist density has changed the atmosphere on weekends. Go on a Wednesday morning if you want it relatively calm.
The neighbourhood has more good restaurants per street than almost anywhere in the city. Sarphatipark sits in the middle of it — a proper local park, underrated, good on a summer evening. Gerard Douplein has outdoor terraces that fill up from late afternoon. The problem with De Pijp now is that it’s aware of itself in a way it didn’t used to be, which changes the energy.
Noord: what it actually is
Amsterdam Noord sits north of the IJ, accessible by the free GVB ferries that run from behind Centraal Station every few minutes. Five years ago it was still primarily industrial — old shipyards, warehouses, not much. The transformation since then has been fast and is still accelerating.
The NDSM wharf is the anchor of it: a vast former shipyard now home to studios, creative agencies, the flea market IJ-Hallen (held monthly, one of the best in Europe), and major festival venues. DGTL runs here. The Noorderpark is a genuinely good park, much less used than Vondelpark. Tolhuistuin is an outdoor venue and cultural space worth knowing about.
Noord feels different from the rest of Amsterdam because it still has space. The streets are wider. The buildings are lower. There’s room to breathe in a city that otherwise doesn’t have much of it. This is changing — new apartments going up constantly, prices following — but for now it’s still the neighbourhood with the most character for the least performance.
The ferry is the key to Noord
The Buiksloterweg ferry runs 24 hours, free. The Distelweg and NDSM ferries run until around midnight. From Centraal it’s 3 minutes. If you’re visiting Amsterdam and you haven’t taken the ferry to Noord and walked around NDSM, you’ve missed something worth seeing.