To break up the flight to Thailand, I decided to spend two nights in Amsterdam before Thailand and three nights after, so what I did in Amsterdam could be done as a long weekend trip. Amsterdam is the perfect layover city to Asia or Africa if you’re coming from the East Coast since it takes about 7 hours to get there. I went with WOW Air literally days before they grounded all flights and a round trip flight from DC to Amsterdam was $350. Unfortunately, now with WOW out of the industry, getting to Amsterdam is now double the price, but I still think I’d use it as a layover spot to avoid some 30 hour flight itineraries. The Netherlands has so many cute cities to explore that I would still like to see like Rotterdam and Utrecht (basically mini-Amsterdams) and Giethoorn (a city made up of all canals and nicknamed the Venice of the Netherlands). I broke up the first half of my trip by staying in Amsterdam and doing all the typical Amsterdam things and the second half of my trip by staying in the country-side and seeing windmills and the tulips/flowers and posted my itinerary here.
Just as a note, Amsterdam seems to be over all of the tourism happening in its city. As such, they removed the famous IAMSTERDAM sign that was located in the museum district by the water. You can still see one right outside the airport by the train, but it certainly doesn’t have as picturesque of a backdrop. They also want to limit tourism in the Red Light District. And they definitely aren’t happy about all of the Instagram tourism going on in their tulip fields. I think generally this is a reaction most cities have when tourism just blows up where people are trying to go about their daily lives. I also experienced cab companies and even Uber drivers trying to be shady so be aware of that. To get from the airport to Amsterdam or even closer towns in The Netherlands, you’re looking at around $100 for a cab or Uber so if you are traveling to downtown Amsterdam, your best bet is to hop on the train. If you are traveling around neighboring towns, renting a car is a good idea as it is easy to drive outside of the heart of Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM
I stayed at Hotel Fita, as they are small boutique hotel, close to the museum district, and (the best part) very flexible about when you can check-in/check-out. Our flight got into Amsterdam about 10:30AM and by the time we got to the hotel, they had us go downstairs in the breakfast area for some coffee while they cleaned our rooms and then we were able to go take a nap before venturing out into the city. I love visiting food markets while in new countries so we walked to the Food Hallen so try some Amsterdam food. Food Hallen is just a big indoor food market with lots of food stalls and some bars. We went to De Ballen Bar, which serves Bitterballen, a popular Dutch food composed of different beef fillings, covered in breadcrumbs and fried. You can choose an assortment of different flavors so that’s what we picked. We also tried some dumplings.
Red Light District
The next stop was the Red Light District. Since we were there pretty early, it didn’t yet have a seedy vibe but from what I understand, the later it gets, the more pick-pocketers, drunk tourists, and sex traffickers. Photos aren’t allowed (understandably), but you basically see various blocks with women in a store display window. They are under a red light and dressed in lingerie. Most of them are either talking on their phones or scrolling through their phones while waiting for customers. Also in the district are a bunch of places for “sex shows.” Definitely a touristy areas. At that time of day, there were mainly tourists walking through, staring at the women in the windows. I imagine this isn’t where locals go at all so not sure what will happen if they actually ban tourists from this area. There are numerous options for walking tours where they talk about the history of the district and how the women got there. This is the most famous red light district in the world and many of the women were sex trafficked to get into this type of industry. There is also a Red Light District museum which would show you a typical room where the women conduct business. Pretty unique area so definitely recommend a walk-through.
The next day was pretty packed in as it was our only full day in the city so I wanted to do the three typical Amsterdam things—the Anne Frank House, Van Gogh Museum and Heineken Brewery.
Anne Frank House
Definitely book well in advance for this museum, as tickets go on sale about three months out and sell out pretty quickly, particularly during the summer, but I was there in March and tickets for that day were still sold out so I was glad I booked tickets several months before. I actually didn’t read the Diary of Anne Frank in school so I read it before my trip and also watched the movie. The Anne Frank House is where Anne Frank, her parents, sister, another couple and their son, and another man hid out during the Holocaust. Anne’s father worked at the building, so that’s how he knew about it and he offered to take in the other couple and other man. From the street, you can’t see the attic of the building where they hid out. And on the inside, a bookcase was assembled to hide the opening of where Anne and her family hid. The people who worked there helped provide them with food and helped hide them. They hid there for about a year and a half before being found by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps. Of the eight people who hid there, only Anne’s father ended up surviving the concentration camps. He found Anne’s diary, which was published and became a symbol of the holocaust. It was interesting to see how the attic was hidden in plain view and I was surprised how big where they stayed actually was, with about four different rooms including the kitchen. You get a surreal feeling seeing how those people were trapped in there for months, only to be discovered. Anne’s actual diary is also on display to see. My first real experience of seeing the impact of the Holocaust was when I went to Budapest and Prague. In Prague, Hitler wanted to keep the area as a museum of an extinct generation. The Old Jewish Cemetery put about 12 people on top of each other and you just see the impact of the number of people who died. In Budapest, you see the ruins of old apartment buildings and the streets where they marched people down the streets to concentration camps. Those places make you see the impact as a whole while the Anne Frank museums breaks it down into the personal experience of what each individual was going through at the time.
Near the Anne Frank Frank is the Cheese Museum, where you basically can just sample all of the amazing cheeses.
Not too far from the cheese museum in that area is Winkel 43, the best apple pie of all time. They basically just sell apple pie and coffee and there is always a line for the apple pie was several tables inside. I had apple pie almost everyday in Amsterdam and this was by far the best. There is also a cute flea market right outside the café where a lot of locals were.
The Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is another popular Amsterdam attractions and another one you should buy tickets for in advance. Generally, though, I am not big on museums or pointillism (the technique where a multitude of small colored dots are applied to the canvas so that they are visible up close, but not so much from far away), but I felt like I could appreciate the technique a little bit more after the museum. Also interesting to see how most of his paintings were created in only a few years and that so many were created while he was in the mental institute. A lot of people also recommend the Rembrandt Museum so that might be good for people who are more interested in art than I am.
The Heineken Experience
I’ve heard mixed thoughts on the Heineken Experience but I thought it was so fun (even though the beer is pretty sucky)! You go through a bunch of different interactive room that show the 4D brewing experience and then you can pay to brew your own beer. They also have you go into a tasting room and give you a sample of the beer while they talk about the history. Then there is a little ride that takes you through the history. There are also free photos and videos they send you where you sit on an Amsterdam bike and it makes you look like you’re riding through the city and then a photo where they superimpose different Heineken images. I have been to a lot of breweries but really enjoyed all the fun interactive things rather than just taking you to look at a room where beer sits in cases and talking about hops and yeast. You can also see the Heineken horses. At the end, you are taken to this fun bar where you get two beers (included).
Canals
Obviously, Amsterdam is pretty well-known for its canals so we had to go on a boat ride while we were there. You don’t need to buy tickets in advance since the boats run almost all day. Built during the Golden Age of the 17th century, Amsterdam’s Canal Ring, known locally as the Grachtengordel, is comprised of a network of intersecting waterways. These were developed through the drainage and reclamation of land for new development. Yet what was initially a practical feature, allowing the city to grow beyond its fortified boundaries, subsequently evolved into the area’s characteristic gabled canal-side estates and spectacular monuments thanks to financial enrichment from the booming maritime trade.
Albert Cupy Market
Again, I love going to markets while traveling since it’s a fun mix of food and culture. And I had yet to have a stroopwafel, so I needed to try one before leaving for Thailand. Among other things to try at the market are pickled herring, kibbeling (fried fish), poffertjes (mini pancakes) and any kind of cheese. I was pretty full from our included hotel breakfast (they made homemade Dutch pancakes!) and had to head back to the airport so I didn’t get to try everything (all of my Thailand blog posts are already up!).
ZAANSE SCHANS
Again, on the way back from Thailand, we stopped back in Amsterdam for a few nights. I wanted to see more of the “country-side” on this leg of the trip since I normally don’t like big cities and always make it a point to see other parts of a country. Besides canals, when people think of Amsterdam, they also picture windmills and tulips, so I decided to check those out this time. I would definitely recommend renting a car for any portion of exploring the Netherlands outside of Amsterdam due to cost and because its really easy driving in Amsterdam (we did not rent a car unfortunately). So we arrived in Amsterdam late evening and went to Zaandam, the closest city to the windmill capital, Zaanse Schans. I mainly wanted to stay at the hotel because the architecture of the hotel is so Dutch, with a colorful stack of traditional houses on top of each other. Its also located right next to a bunch of shops and restaurants and has a small town vibe.
Zaanse Schans is like the Disney World of windmills. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, around 600 windmills were constructed around Holland. As the industry moved away from depending on windmills for production, eight of the region’s surviving windmills were loaded onto trucks and boats and then, transported to a nearby neighborhood called Zaanse Schans in order to create an open-air museum dedicated to Dutch industrial history. There are other places in Holland that have windmills which I wrote about in my itinerary, but this one is the most popular and there were definitely a lot of tourists even in shoulder season. I found it really unique and enjoyable, though, and you can go into the different windmills for a fee and up to the top outside.
There is also a popular pancake place near the windmills. The pancakes at Restaurant De Kraai are the best I’ve ever had. The Dutch pancakes are 11 inches, thin and piled with toppings, the most popular being apples. We got there right when it was supposed to open, but were told by a neighboring shop that they basically open whenever they feel like it so they ended up opening about an hour and a half after the posted time.
Right next to the pancake place is the wooden shoe factory. You can watch how they make wooden shoes, buy some of the shoes, or take random pictures inside clogs.
Zaanse Schans also has a cheese and chocolate factory. The cheese factory is really cool as you can sample dozens of different cheeses and watch how they make cheese. You can actually order the cheese online to be delivered to your house so you don’t really need to buy and lug cheese all the way home, although it stays fresh for a couple of days outside refrigeration. The chocolate factory isn’t that great as its basically just a shop to buy homemade chocolate or hot chocolate although you can buy hot chocolate at most of the windmills.
Zaanse Schans is a really fun open air museum and definitely gives you that Dutch vibe. I enjoyed it a lot even though there were a lot of people as the day went on. I’d like to go back and visit some other windmill cities in Holland.
KEUKENHOF FESTIVAL
So the next morning, we drove over to Lisse since we were going to the Keukenhof Festival. The gardens are open from the end of March until early May with more than 7 million flower bulbs planted and about 800 different tulips. That sounds all well and good, but the advertisements for the festival are always those big huge fields of flowers with the windmill in the background. I find that incredibly misleading because those fields are the fields of private farmers. There is barbed wire forbidding people from entering the fields. The flowers in the Keukenhof Garden are pretty, but definitely not fields of flowers.
Since I didn’t get my flower field fixed, I ended up finding someone to drive me around to find flower fields that were not surrounded by barbed wire. These were located moreso in Hillegom, not Lisse, so I would definitely recommend renting a car and driving yourself around to find some of the fields. Peak season is mid-April so I would try to go earlier to avoid all the crowds.
As mentioned, Amsterdam was just a stopover for us before and after Thailand but it really added to the trip overall and I really enjoyed Amsterdam. Although I think they are really over tourists, visiting other cities in Holland that aren’t so oversaturated with people is probably a good idea. There are several cities smaller than Amsterdam but still have that Dutch feel and other cities with tulips and windmills. Amsterdam (along with Frankfurt and London) is a really great place for a stopover before traveling to Asia or Africa from the East Coast, so hopefully I’ll be back to explore more of the Dutch country-side.
