Hello! We’ve had a great few days in Amsterdam, although unfortunately we weren’t able to go to Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh museum. Both of these attractions were completely sold out (Anne Frank House for the next 2 months!). It was a shame, but we still found plenty to do!
Day One
We arrived in Amsterdam about 2pm and headed out to our hotel. We were stoked to find that our hotel was just an 8 minute underground ride from the central station making getting around very easy for us! The station was right next to our hotel as well. We had a bit of time before we could check into our hotel, so we went to a cafe called Coffee & Coconuts which turned out to be a great cafe with really good coffee! Dangerous having it so close to our hotel.
After checking in, we got on a bus and went up to Volendam. A friend of ours who spent a year in New Zealand and went along to Belmont Baptist during that time was there for the day with another person who had been in NZ during her time there. It was great to be able to catch up with Esther in her home country and we are glad it worked out so well.
Volendam is a small coastal town just north of Amsterdam. When we arrived we walked through some markets which were just packing up and headed out to the waterfront. There was so much going on there!
We found Esther and Bre and went to buy some poffertjes. Poffertjes are tiny little pancake-type things (smaller than pikelets) which are then covered in some kind of topping. Miriam and I had just had lunch so we shared some covered in chocolate and strawberries. So delicious!
We sat on the water edge and watched all the boats out in the sun. Esther told us that it was in fact a lake that we were looking at because the entrance to the harbour had been closed off. This has in turn caused the water to become fresh water which is quite strange! It definitely looked like we were looking out to sea.
After walking around for a bit and trialling various snacks, we headed back into Amsterdam for dinner.
We walked the streets of old Amsterdam which carry a very strong scent of marijuana. One of the things Amsterdam is known for is the availability of weed. Was certainly an interesting experience walking through the streets!
I was getting hungry and rule number 1 of travel is ‘don’t look hard for the best food if you’re hungry.’ So we stopped and got dinner. I had pizza and Miriam had pasta. Very Italian of us.
In the evening we caught up with Jordan & Tristin and spent some time walking up and down canals. It was great to see what was around and it exhausted us ready for bed!
Day Two
On Sunday we took the ferry over into the newer part of Amsterdam to go to Straat Museum. There is quite a big culture of street art in Amsterdam, particularly in the northern part over the water. This museum is dedicated to street art from around the world.
The museum was very interesting and outlined various types of street art from tagging to murals. The artworks were incredible! The detail that can be painted largely from spray paint cans is amazing. We really enjoyed walking around and seeing all the art.
Next door to the museum is the largest flea market in Europe. It had just got going, but it was a €5 entrance fee so we decided to give it a miss. Instead we grabbed lunch from the supermarket and sat by the water eating it.
In the afternoon we went over to Anne Frank House to check out the outside of it. It’s just a pretty normal house which I think is fitting for someone who was a pretty normal girl caught up in something horrible.
We spent some time sitting by the canal and then went to check out the Amsterdam Cheese Museum. Pretty loose use of the word museum there though. It was essentially a cheese shop (where we tried every type of cheese) and downstairs they have some stuff about the history of cheese in the Netherlands. The cheese was very yum!
Most of the rest of the day was spent walking around checking out the city. We stopped for a beer and booked ourselves into the Pancakehouse for afternoon tea tomorrow!
The evening was fairly plain and we had some kebabs for dinner. It’s funny how many kebab shops there are in Amsterdam. Probably a direct correlation to the amount of weed available.
Day Three
Monday was our second wedding anniversary so we had a few nice things planned for the day!
We started by grabbing a coffee and croissant from Coconuts & Coffee which was again great! We then head into town for our canal cruise which we were running pretty tight on time for!
We got there just in time and got on the boat. There are heaps of big cruises on the canals, but we decided that it would be nice to do a smaller one in a boat that doesn’t have a roof on it. There were only about 10 others in our boat which was really nice!
The weather was a little cooler than the day before and we really enjoyed our cruise down the canals. We learnt some things about Amsterdam such as the reason why a lot of the houses lean forward. Apparently this was so that people could easily pull their spices off the boats in the canal and up into the safest part of their houses – the top level. If the front of the house was straight then the spices would hit the house potentially damaging the house or the spices! Glad we had that question answered for us because we were wondering why they were all on a lean!
After our cruise, we went for a bit of a walk and spent some time looking through some clothing shops.
Miriam had been keen to eat some herring while we were there (apparently famous in Amsterdam) so she found a dodgy little fishery with lots of positive reviews on Google. The guy that served us put a herring on a bun for Miriam with some pickles and popped a little Netherlands flag on the top. He then took the “cash only” from me with his fishy fingers and returned the change smelling like fish. I made sure I got rid of that money soon after! Miriam really enjoyed the fish!
We then had our appointment with Jordan & Tristin at the Pancakehouse. This is a tiny little restaurant in the middle of Amsterdam that just serves pancakes! They say that they’re the smallest restaurant in Europe and who is really going to argue that? There are five tables in the restaurant and everyone is crammed in. The kitchen is right there next to you and according to the waiter “the chef can only cook two pancakes at a time, so don’t wait for the others, just eat before it gets cold”.
It was such a cool experience and the pancakes were amazing! Highly recommend if you’re in Amsterdam and keen for some yum food! They do both sweet and savoury pancakes. You’ve gotta book though!
After pancakes we ended up heading back to the hotel via the museum area of the city. It was cool to see all the old buildings set up as museums in one area. We could see why buying a museum pass is a good idea if you’re keen to see everything there. There are so many!
In the evening we went to a bar for dinner just down the road from our hotel. It was recommended to order the food as sharing plates which was great because we could try a few things! We had a really nice time and I got to try some Amsterdam tripel beer. It was nice!
That was a great way to finish off a really good wedding anniversary! Not sure we could have imagined last year that we would upgrade from Rotorua to Amsterdam! Probably best that it doesn’t become a competition.
And that brings us to the end of our time in Amsterdam! We didn’t try hiring bikes because it looks like absolute chaos, and we managed to get around everywhere by foot anyway!
We are now sitting on a very long train to Berlin!
Bye for now! 👋🏻
