Amsterdam, Netherlands | Travel Diary

Amsterdam is one of those places that I always thought would be cool to visit, but didn’t really know that much about it, apart from the fact that Anne Frank lived there. So on our Europe trip last year, along with Scotland (read about that here and here), we also decided to go to Amsterdam.

We spent two days and three nights in Amsterdam. This was the first country I’d traveled to where I had zero concept of the language. Luckily everyone (literally everyone) speaks English, so it’s actually a non-issue. Most signs are in English, or have an English translation, and all restaurants have English menus as well.

We were a bit conservative on this trip, really sticking to the tourists spots, and not being too adventurous with our choices, all the way down to our accommodations. We stayed at the most American hotel possible- the Marriott. We also didn’t really plan a lot of stuff to do, deciding instead to walk around and go with the flow, stopping to do what we stumbled upon and looked interesting.

We arrived to Amsterdam late in the day, so we decided to take a walk to get acclimated and find someplace to grab a bite to eat. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant (go figure). It wasn’t tex-mex, but it was still very good! First impression of Amsterdam- LOTS of bikes and very confusing traffic patterns. We liked what we saw on our first adventure, and we excited to get a good nights sleep and explore more the following day.

On our first full day in Amsterdam, we grabbed breakfast and a coffee at Starbucks (notice the American theme continuing) before heading off to a canal boat tour. This is a really cool way to see the city. I was struck by the high number of houseboats lining each side of the canals.

This guy was just chilling, reading his newspaper, and drinking his morning cup of coffee. On his houseboat.

After the canal tour, we walked around a bit searching for a lunch spot. We stumbled upon a really cool restaurant, called De Carrousel Pannenkoeken, that was an old carousel. They had pancakes on the menu (which is a big thing in Amsterdam, but more crepe like than traditional American pancakes) so I excitedly ordered the apple cinnamon upon our waiters recommendation. It was AMAZING. I’m still dreaming about that pancake.

After lunch we walked over to the floating flower market. Honestly, this wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. Each flower stall had the same product, and apart from the tulip flower bulbs, most of it was junk for tourists. As we were walking through the market we noticed a cheese store. Amsterdam is noted for their gouda. We sampled a variety of flavors, and ended up buying several flavors to take home. We also discovered stroupewaffles, which are basically a waffle cookie drizzled in honey. We found a cool street with lots of cute shops that we browsed through while making our way back towards our hotel.

We’d passed a french fry place earlier in the day called Chipsy King (we talked about it here) that we decided we wanted for dinner. They only sell fries, and they have a variety of dipping sauces to chose from. We each got the biggest box offered, and brought them back to our hotel room and watched movies while eating our fries and sharing our sauces.

The next day, we woke up and went to Starbucks (yes again) and then headed to the Anne Frank House. This was the thing I was most looking forward to in Amsterdam. I read her diary in middle school, and I remember it really impacting me at the time. We bought our tickets in advance, which was the way to go. The line to buy tickets was so long, that people we saw in line before we went in for our tour were still in line for tickets when we left over an hour later! Photos were not allowed inside, so I can’t show you what we saw, but it was an incredibly moving experience. I hadn’t realized until shortly before our trip that the Anne Frank Museum was on the actual site of where the family was in hiding, I had thought it was just a museum about her life. Walking up the staircase to the Annex, and through the doorway that was concealed with the bookcase, was an incredible experience. What was remarkable was just how tiny the rooms were for as many people were living there. Like smaller than my first New York apartment small.

After the tour we decided to head to the Cheese Museum that was nearby. This turned out to be just a small room with some information on how cheese is made. We got to try some cheeses, but honestly, the store we were in yesterday by the flower market was much better.

After cheese, we ventured down the street to a restaurant we had heard of and we excited to try called The Pancake Bakery. They do specials by country. For example, Shelby ordered the French pancake, which was goat cheese with honey and sun dried tomatoes. I ordered the Italian which was a caprese pancake. It was good, but I enjoyed my apple cinnamon version from the day prior more.

We walked around the rest of the afternoon window shopping and popping into stores we passed that looked interesting. Guess what we had for dinner that night? Yup, Chipsy King again. It was that good guys.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Amsterdam was the airport. Unlike in America, in Europe you don’t know what gate you are flying out of until the last minute. It’s similar to train travel in America, if you are familiar with that. Everybody stands around in a common waiting area awaiting their gate (or platform) assignment. I’ve found this to be the case at every European airport I’ve traveled out of. Typically though, you check in and go through security prior to arriving in the common waiting area. At the Amsterdam airport, we checked in and realized we hadn’t ever gone through security when we saw our gate assignment come up on the large screen in the waiting area. Turns out, at this airport, you go through security right at the gate as you’re boarding the plane. It was a little bizarre to me to have all those individual security checkpoints instead of streamlining it into several larger security screening areas, but hey, it seems to be working for them.

Amsterdam was an amazing city and looking back I wish we’d had more time there. There is a ton to do that we didn’t get to. We’ll just have to go back!

Have you ever been to Amsterdam? What was your favorite thing you did?

-Ashley xx