Noord is the place to be for cool parties and festivals, creative start-ups and laid-back hangouts.
If you want to seek out the city's rawest and most urban area, you need to be in Noord. Ten years ago, you had no business here. Nowadays, the ferries with hipsters sail back and forth across the IJ. You'll find Europe's biggest flea market, the EYE film museum, industrially decorated cafés and restaurants and vintage home furnishing shops. You'll feast your eyes here. Noord is the Brooklyn of Amsterdam and appears in more and more lists of the world's hippest neighbourhoods. They can still colour outside the lines here: no neat terraces, but complete gardens and beaches, where you are not bothered by hordes of tourists and trams racing by.
