It doesn’t happen very often that I go to IJburg, and that’s mostly because I don’t have any friends living there. Come think of it, wouldn’t it be nice to have friends living all throughout the city, to have an excuse to leave, every now and then, the comfort of your own neighbourhood?

Luckily, I don’t always need a reason to go and explore various areas of the city. Amsterdam is just so diverse from one neighbourhood to the other, and it’s so easy to travel throughout the city, that all I need is to jump in a tram without any direction in my head, then see where I feel like getting off.

Such spontaneous decision lead us to IJburg last Sunday. We took tram 26 from Central Station and got off 15 minutes later, at the end of the line. We walked to Blijburg and had lunch on their terrace – it felt as is we were at the seaside – watched the windsurfers at the Surf Center, then had some coffee and carrot cake at Espressofabriek, before heading back to the center.

I particularly loved the architectural details of this building in IJburg, so airy and serene, I had to stop and take several photos of it. Waves? Shells? Dunes? Not sure how exactly to describe those dynamic, flowing details, but I have to say they make one of my favourite buildings in Amsterdam. Just take a look! And see just how “in awe” I was when staring at it myself. 🙂