Ireland was gifted an extra bonus Friday off after St Patrick’s day, and we took advantage of this 4 day weekend and went to Amsterdam.
It was a pretty wild 72 hours. We had I Amsterdam passes, and had a vague notion of what we wanted to do, but hadn’t planned it out carefully enough, so ended up not… utilising them as well as we could have.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon, checked into our Botel – Felicitas (stayed on a cute boat in the harbour by NEMO Science Museum, highly recommend, cramped but cosy and breakfast included. Also the only accommodation we could find under 100 a night.)
Travel note: Amsterdam has a tourist tax that is separate to any accommodation costs payable prior to arrival.
Thursday night we started with a tour of the Red Light district, hosted by the lovely Sandra, grabbed some Indonesian food (Dutch food, eh – go for anything else for flavour) then headed to go and check out a sex show, because… why not?
Sex shows are really weird. They’re very mechanical. Who has quiet sex, I ask you? We made the mistake of staying for slightly longer than the hour duration of the show, and got to see a couple of the acts twice, and that shit is precision choreographed, like a bizarre dance. Usually dancers are enjoying themselves though? Very strange.
There was an assortment of ladies in various weird and wonderful costume with a variety of accoutrements stuffed up orifaces – my favourite was a girl who wrote with a marker on a willing audience member’s chest.
Another girl who had an entire line of bunting hidden up there, and spelled a message of welcome to Casa Rosso – there was metres worth! How was it so tidily hidden up there!?!? I have many questions.
Anyway, sex shows are not for me. I just start psychoanalysing everyone and wonder about what exactly it was in their childhoods that went wrong (or maybe right?) that they chose this for a profession. It’s very distracting. I’m sure they make good money for only a few hours of work.
Our tour guide assured us that sex shows and prostitution happen everywhere, that it’s the world’s oldest profession, and while there are some that are brought there under duress, about 80% of people do this job willingly, and there are protections in place to stop human trafficking. (Read here for more info, but obviously those claims may be bogus.)
In stark contrast to the lasciviousness of the Red Light district, we went to Anne Frank’s house the next morning (Travel Tip: Amsterdam pass did not include this and must be booked in advance).
I remember reading Anne Frank’s diary when I was 11 and resonating with it a lot – the crushes, your body doing weird things, and much more recently, being trapped inside and not being able to escape.
Seeing it all in real life was a very enlightening experience, and it was truly amazing to see the bookshelf that hid the staircase, and read the stories of how they weren’t able to use running water during the day for fear of being found out, nor stand too close to windows, in case someone saw them.
For three full years they hid in this secret house that Anne’s father had carefully constructed behind his food warehouse, fearing that it would be needed for such a time as this.
They weren’t allowed to go outside at all during that time, and had to rely upon a very discreet network of friends who brought them supplies and kept their secrets.
As an aspiring writer, I loved seeing Anne’s ambition of being a writer and a journalist highlighted throughout the house, with quote after quote alluding to this.
I had always thought that she’d just kept a diary to pass the time, but no. She had every intention of telling the world her story, and documenting what was happening to her and her family.
Seeing that three dimensionality to her made it all that much more tragic when you realise that they were discovered only months before the end of the war and the liberation of the prison camps – 4 August, 1944. To come so close to surviving the war and not make it is an absolute travesty. Her father survived, and he is the reason that we know anything about her. He found her diary, and got it published. What a legend!
I do wonder if her story would have been as compelling if she hadn’t died. There are many survivor stories, but I don’t know that any of them are as universal as Anne Frank’s. The tragedy of death has a way of making a tale more compelling than it would otherwise have been.
After Anne Frank house we hustled back to the centre of town, making a mental note about where the canal boat tours left from (literally just outside the Anne Frank house).
We did the Sandemans walking tour with the same delightful Sandra who we’d had the night before. Starting in Dam square, we visited an early university.
We learned how houses winched up furniture to the top story, so they were designed to stick out further at the top to accommodate this.
We heard about the 1m worth of bikes in the bottom of the canals.
Saw Rembrant house, and finished near the Jewish quarter, learning about Amsterdam’s dark history.
From there we made our way back to the canal boat tour place that we’d seen by Anne Frank house, having a cheeky chocolate brownie along the way. I’m sure there are other places to get canal boat tours, but we couldn’t find them so easily, and this one was included in our pass.
We did a loop around the canals, getting a tour from water level, saw the seven sisters – houses all leaning on one another for support for several hundred years at this point -and a view that inspired one of Van Gogh’s paintings.
The brownies did very little, just made us sleepy, and made me lose my sense of direction – not so helpful when I was trying to work out which parts of the Van Gogh museum we had and hadn’t seen.
The all-over-the-place of our trip was not really planned, and if we had our time over again, I think it would’ve been better to plan it by vicinity rather than the things that we most wanted to see that were on opposing sides of the city – yoyo-ing all over the city is a good way to get to know it, but it is also a huge time suck.
Part of the reason for the weird times is that you had to book in ahead of time for certain activities, and the times available were limited.
The Van Gogh museum was great, and really interesting. I was hoping to see Starry Night but alas no, that’s in MOMA in New York.
We enjoyed an excellent night of stand up comedy at Boom Chicago, and wandered back, admiring the lights on the water back to our botel.
We were staying right next to NEMO – the Dutch museum of science and technology, but unfortunately it didn’t open until 10am. So we headed to the museum quarter to fill in our morning.
We tried and failed to hire bikes, and tried and failed to get into the Rijksmuseum, but were successful at getting to MOCO, the modern museum of art.
This little gem housed a great many Banksy pieces, and NFTs – interactive, moving pieces of art, and altogether very clever brilliant pieces. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.
After a brief peruse in the diamond museum across the road, we headed back to NEMO for our allocated midday time, enjoying the cafe at the top, and the views out across the city before meandering through the 4 levels of scientific awesomeness.
This place is absolutely jam-packed full of amazing, interactive exhibits, and it is so much fun!
There are videos from an astronauts perspective, exhibits where you get to excavate and inspect human bones as if you’re a palaeontologist, there was an amazing Rube Goldberg machine display that filled up 2 levels and sets off a rocket!
There was a giant bubble machine, interactive virtual dams, a ‘factory’ that kids could go and ‘work’ in, various building structures where you could see which worked and which didn’t, and figure out how to make them stronger, and loads of stuff about genetics, diversity, and how we’re all similar, different, but beautiful and brilliant.
I highly recommend it! If I could’ve taken my class there, I would’ve.
Afterwards, we headed across the River Amstel on the ferry to the north side of the river where A-Dam tower is, and waited in an impressively long line to get to the top.
Jared encouraged me to go solo on the swing that hangs out over the impressively tall building – it’s only one minute, but it’s a good way to get one’s heart thumping and be reminded of one’s mortality. Freezing, we went down to Madam and enjoyed a drink and some food as the sun sank into the west.
This is a very popular spot for sunset, so I’d recommend a booking. We were lucky, but witnessed lots of others get turned away. There’s Madam which is like a bistro bar type scenario, or there’s Moon restaurant, which is a bit fancier and on the 19th floor. I’d recommend bookings to both.
(Our booking for viewing was for 7pm, but we just showed up a couple of hours early, and it was fine.)
We then went to find a bar, watched the rugby, and I went on a mish to find chips. I did in fact find chips, and they were the best chips I have ever had. So crispy and so filling!
The next morning was the usual slog to the airport, and heading back home to get back into the swing of things, but the 4 day weekend was a brilliant treat, and while we didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do, it was a lovely taste of Amsterdam.
Jared’s favourite: Anne Frank house was incredibly impactful, very striking and profound. The Van Gogh museum was brilliant, as I’m a big fan of his work, and also seeing the ladies in the windows piqued my interest.
Lauren’s favourite: I really enjoyed watching the sun set from A-Dam tower – the swing off the side was also quite brilliant. The general vibe of Amsterdam is modern and hip and progressive as well as old, wise and venerated. There’s so much to explore that I feel like we barely scratched the surface. Loved the Anne Frank house. It was so interesting to get more details on her story.
If we go back we’d like to:
- Spend more time in the museum quarter
- Hire bikes and cycle around the Vondelpark, and the rest of the city
- Get outside of Amsterdam and see the rest of the Netherlands – obviously tulips
- Go to Rembrandt house
- Maybe check out something creepy like Dungeon Amsterdam or BODY WORLDS Amsterdam
- Chill next to the water with a drink at one of the many water-side bars