Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a city that rewards slow walking — canals bending around every corner, bicycles outnumbering people, and museums (the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh, the Concertgebouw) dense enough to fill days on their own. Between the Royal Palace's grand interiors and the quiet weight of the Oude Kerk, it's a city where history and daily life share the same narrow streets.

A short train ride out, Haarlem turned out to be one of the trip's nicer surprises — the Grote Markt, St. Bavo Church, and the Spaarne River moving at a noticeably slower pace than the capital. And tucked into a wall near Leidseplein, "Diversity in Bureaucracy" — a striking mural of a Surinamese dancer swirling through a storm of paperwork — was the kind of find that wasn't on any list, but ended up one of my favorite shots of the trip.