Vondelpark

In the 1970s, this park was basically a hippie commune. Thousands of young people — draft dodgers, backpackers, artists, anyone with a sleeping bag and a guitar — camped out on the grass for entire summers, making music and celebrating peace. The Dutch government tolerated it because that's what the Dutch government does. By the 1980s the party wound down, but Vondelpark has never quite lost that easygoing, slightly anarchic spirit.

The park itself opened in 1865 as "Nieuwe Park" — New Park — designed by landscape architect Jan David Zocher in the English landscape style, all rolling meadows and meandering paths over what had been marshland. It was renamed Vondelpark in 1867 after Joost van den Vondel, a 17th-century poet and playwright sometimes called the Dutch Shakespeare, whose statue now stands near the main entrance. The park expanded to its current 47 hectares by 1877.

With over 10 million visitors a year, it's the most visited park in the Netherlands. In 1996 it became one of the first city parks to be designated a national monument. The Vondelpark Open Air Theatre, established in 1974, hosts free performances of music, dance, and theater from June through August — no tickets needed, just show up.

On a sunny afternoon, Vondelpark is Amsterdam at its most relaxed. Joggers circle the ponds, families picnic under elm trees, teenagers play football, someone is definitely playing bongos. It's the city's backyard, the place where the formal grid of canals and right angles gives way to curves and green space and the sound of parakeets — yes, wild parakeets — chattering in the treetops.