Margo, refined company in Oud-Zuid

The piano came first, before the art and long before the gardening, and it explains a good deal about her. People who practise seriously learn patience in a way that does not leave them, and Margo has it: she can sit with a slow conversation, let a pause happen, and return to something you said twenty minutes ago because she was still turning it over. She is 31, 166 centimetres and slim, with long straight dark brown hair and brown eyes, and a vintage lounge elegance to her styling that suits low light and good glassware. Refined is the first word guests use. Mysterious is the second, and she rather enjoys that, since she is simply someone who does not explain herself in the first hour.

Contemporary art is her serious enthusiasm, the kind that involves a real argument about the Stedelijk and an occasional train to a show elsewhere. Angelika is the other one who will go to an opening for pleasure, and Karolina shares the piano. Gardening is the private half of her life, and she can tell you exactly which balcony plants survive a canal winter and which ones are a waste of a Saturday morning.

Her corner of the city is Oud-Zuid, a short ride from the concert hall and close to the quieter hotels. She works in English and her manner is calm throughout, which travellers arriving off a punishing schedule tend to find restorative. Give her an unhurried evening. Margo is not a companion for a rushed hour, and she is remarkable across a long one. At 31 she has the confidence to let a dinner go quiet for a minute, which is the most underrated quality on this entire board and the reason regular travellers keep asking for her by name.

An exhibition, if one is on, is where Margo would rather begin. She has genuine arguments about the Stedelijk and will take a train to a show elsewhere when it deserves the trip, so an afternoon in the museum quarter is not a way of filling time for her.

Dinner afterwards is unhurried by design, somewhere with low light and good glassware, which suits the vintage way she dresses. She learned patience at a piano and it never left her, so she will let a table go quiet for a full minute and then pick up a remark you made half an hour ago, because she had been turning it over the whole time. Ask about the balcony garden if you want the private half of her, and what does and does not survive a canal winter.