Seven million international leisure travelers visit Amsterdam annually to experience the exceptional iconic sights of the capital in The Netherlands. They spend time in museums and galleries featuring artists like Van Gogh and Rembrandt, attend hundreds of festivals, sample Dutch cuisine, are dazzled by brilliantly-cut diamonds, and witness a unique profusion of tulips in spring. Exploring independently, or signing up for local tours, there are many days’ worth of attractions and activities, reflecting what British destination expert, Rodney Bolt, calls Amsterdam’s “delicious mix of 17th century charm and urban edginess.”

During two recent visits to Amsterdam of several days each, I only used a taxi once and it took three times as long to return to my hotel as it had taken me to walk to the museum I planned to visit. In an area with 165 canals and nearly 1,500 bridges, there is predictable congestion when it comes to cars and delivery trucks. However, the most challenging street hazard for international pedestrians is the silent, environmentally-friendly bicycle sneaking up on you while you are looking around to avoid oncoming cars.

Luckily, the ever-practical Dutch anticipate our foreigner obliviousness in their city of bicycles and they politely slow down or ring a bell. The embrace of the bike culture illustrates how Amsterdammers have chosen to avoid gridlock, keep down urban noise and breathe clean air. They pedal along in wide dedicated lanes, filling their grocery bags at different shops, going to work with business clothes and briefcases, or just enjoying a sunny afternoon with young children or pets who observe the world from a homemade box attached to the front wheel.

There are thought to be as many bicycles as Amsterdammers in the city, with plenty of bikes available for tourists to join the bicycle throngs for a time, and then just leave their bikes at a street rack when they reach their destination. Or visitors may take a bike tour and learn about the city’s history and neighborhood hotspots from a local guide. For some of us, a piece of each day is happily spent over a coffee and pastry at one of many tree-shaded outdoor cafés while taking in the streetscape and canalscape.

For anyone planning to spend a few days of unscheduled time in Amsterdam, the ‘I amsterdam City Card’ is the way to go (http://www.iamsterdam.com/en/i-am/iamsterdam-city-card). It is purchasable in advance online, upon arrival at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol tourist information office, or at city locations listed on the website. Options are for 24, 48, 72 or 96 hours, offering free entrance to many museums and major attractions, a canal cruise, discounts, special offers and unlimited public transport (bus, tram and metro). With my 72 hour pass, I rambled all over this compact, safe city day and evening, and sampled much more on my wish list than I would otherwise have known about or accomplished.

For over 400 years, Amsterdam has been the premier city for its excellence in cutting diamonds. Recently, some companies have opened their doors to visitors with free educational tours that leave everyone knowledgeable about carats, colors, clarity and cuts, as well as the unique history of diamonds and the Amsterdam trade in particular. Tours are given seven days a week and in 25+ languages, some offering diamond cutter demonstrations. You may reserve these popular tours online or take your chances at the door.

My visit to the Gassan Diamonds factory (gassan.com/en/tours), housed in a beautifully-restored steamdriven mill, made me look at my own jewelry with much more respect. I learned about the mystical world of diamonds and the relative rarity of different colors, while watching professional cutters and polishers at work. I also learned a lot from the free tour offered by another major player, Coster Diamonds (costerdiamonds.com), particularly spending time in its well-presented diamond museum. You can’t go wrong with a piece of jewelry from Amsterdam, still proudly claiming the moniker, City of Diamonds.

A one-hour drive out of Amsterdam, the 80-acre Keukenhof Gardens (keukenhof. Nl/en/) are considered to be the most beautiful spring gardens in the world. For travelers who love flowers, Keukenhof is like a pilgrimage that can only be enjoyed between mid-March and mid-May when the spring bulbs, mainly tulips, offer the public a sea of color and creative design along 15 kilometers of pathways. Many international tour and river cruise operators plan itineraries that dovetail with this event.

Dutch cultivation and trade in flower bulbs started more than 400 years ago, and today it remains one of the country’s trademark industries as well as a huge tourism attraction. In just two months each year, 800,000 visitors flock from all over the world to see what new designs the expert Keukenhof gardeners will present with seven million new bulbs planted the previous fall. At the end of the season, they will be removed and destroyed while a fresh seven million bulbs are planted in creative arrangements around a new theme for the following season.

So where’s the “urban edginess” for which this city is globally known? A visit to the official Amsterdam tourism website (iamsterdam.com/en/) offers the ultimate shopping list for every interest, highlighting over 300 festivals a year, a colorful nightlife, and 10 unusual dining experiences. Next visit, I’ll be showing up at some of those eateries!

In truth, residents of Amsterdam aren’t fazed by much. After all, it is a city that was way out front with legal cannabis coffee shops and a regulated Red Light district that these days is mostly a walk-through attraction for tourists of all ages. However, citizens have recently taken exception to tourist beer bikes on some of their historic streets. These are the loudly-singing, pedal-bonding groups favored in numerous European cities as pre-wedding celebrations abroad. It appears that Amsterdammers do have their limits!