In the old fishing village of Durgerdam, a heritage inn on the IJmeer has been restored into a 14-room stay with an honesty bar, a herb garden and a kitchen that draws almost entirely from the farms next door.
The cobblestones begin before the water does. Off the motorway from the airport the road narrows to a single lane, threading past a row of traditional Dutch fishing houses with boats tied up on the other side. I was running late. A delayed flight at the end of a week in the Nordics had me texting apologies to Megan Wyper, a fellow New Zealander and recent Amsterdam transplant, who wrote back that she was managing fine with a strawberry spritz, house-baked sourdough and a soft breeze off the lake. De Durgerdam was already sounding like the right place to land.
Check-in had been handled online, and no one seemed inclined to hold me up with formalities: my bag was taken, the full tour waved off until morning, and I was sent straight across to the jetty where Megan was waiting. Reeds swayed at the table’s edge and dinner at De Mark ran to four courses of local food as the last light faded. That ease, nothing a problem, is the kind of welcome you notice; you settle into a place before you’ve unpacked. A fisherman’s drink was waiting in my room, a tiny bottle with a handwritten note, pure Drink Me. No rabbit hole followed, just the best sleep of the trip.
Built in 1664, the inn took in sailors and fishermen, an inn for sailors and fishermen, its pale weatherboard front a landmark for the boats that once tied up at the door, back when it was all open sea. It’s been a place to eat, drink and stay ever since. By the entrance, the original staircase, its treads worn to a dip in the middle, is protected now, so it stays exactly as it is.
Buro Belén is behind the whole interior. The palette turns hard away from the white boards outside, into muted olive greens, ochres and terracottas, deep and enveloping and grounded by tiles from Royal Tichelaar, one of the country’s oldest working potteries, that recur in the bathrooms, the bar and underfoot. Almost everything takes its cue from the water and sky just outside. Clouds drift across the paintwork, small fish surface in the finishes, and framed sprigs of dried seaweed gathered from the old Zuiderzee appear through the rooms. The art carries the same thread back to the village, one piece dating to 1645 and catalogued in a book left in each room.
Next morning breaks warm but not yet hot. I pull on a swimsuit and a robe and pad down to the jetty, testing it with my toes and working up the nerve before I jump. The swim is short and sweet, the lake still cold at that hour, and then it’s a table at De Mark for breakfast: eggs scrambled at the table and finished with tarragon from the garden, summer berries, yoghurt from a farm down the road, the team every bit as enthused about it as I am.
Cooking stays close to home. De Mark works to the seasons and mostly to Europe, straying only for what the continent can’t grow, like coffee. More herbs come from the garden: lemon balm dropped into a drink in place of lemon, lavender pressed into oil, violet flowers to finish a plate. One evening, morels and gnocchi arrived with cheese from a goat farm south of Amsterdam that Stijn had visited as a child. “Now we’re serving cheese from the same goats I grew up with,” says Stijn. “We tell the story at the table, and people say that’s where I’m off to tomorrow.”
Going tomorrow is encouraged. With a hand-drawn map and an electric bike, guests get pointed past the harbour to farm stalls selling eggs, berries, kefir and cheese you pay for by phone, or on to the old fishing towns of Marken and Monnickendam. I had the trail largely to myself, rolling through farmland to Holysloot, a village one street long, then home past old cottages and the odd sharp modern build. Front of house isn’t really a department here. Whoever checks you in might also cook your breakfast and wheel out your bike, no one too precious about whose job is whose. About 40 per cent of guests are Dutch, plenty out from Amsterdam for a single night, new parents claiming 24 hours to themselves.
Bedrooms are there for switching off: dark enough to sleep clean through a bright northern morning, quiet enough to lose an afternoon to a book. Anything else is a few steps away: a drink, a fire, the lake. Right at the back of the garden, half-hidden past the herb beds, a bench catches the sun as it drops behind Amsterdam — the best seat I found for the end of the day.
De Mark draws its own crowd. “Some people see it as a hotel with a very good restaurant,” says Stijn. “I’d call it a restaurant with rooms.” On the jetty I fell into conversation with a couple out from the city for a swim and dinner; when locals and visitors want the same thing from a place, it’s usually doing something right. It’s a rare thing to arrive somewhere late and flustered and leave having done, quite deliberately, almost nothing.
Words Alice Lines
Photography Chantal Arnts and Studio Unfolded
