Dappermarkt

This guide to Dappermarkt in Amsterdam-East follows Olfert Dapper, a linen weaver's son turned Amsterdam doctor who never practiced medicine and, without ever leaving the Netherlands, wrote widely read seventeenth-century accounts of Africa, China, India, Persia and beyond. It traces how the street later named for him grew into a market, from its 1910 designation to National Geographic naming it one of the world's best shopping streets in 2007. Listen for the stalls of Surinamese spices, Moroccan flatbread, Turkish textiles and Eastern European pickles along its two hundred and fifty stalls.