“I can’t believe you’ve never been to Amsterdam, I loved it there, you should go” chortled my mum. It was many years since my mum had been to Amsterdam but it is still one of her favourite destinations - that I had never been to! She has many stories to tell of her visits there.
So I hit my laptop and booked a long weekend for myself and my boyfriend. We’re staying very close to the town centre, within walking distance of all the sights I want to see like the Van Gogh museum, Anne Frank’s house and a short train ride to the Johan Cruyff Arena. We are both big football fans and always try to visit a football stadium whilst travelling. For this trip we are also practising using the rucksacks which we recently purchased, for our upcoming trip to the Galapagos Islands and South America. My rucksack was very overloaded and very heavy - not my greatest idea! And to top it all I had to pay an extra baggage charge for my rucksack at the Airport, as they classed it as a “large cabin bag”. I also do not travel light - I need to work on this for sure. However, for now I have to struggle on with said rucksack and learn from it - hopefully!! I am meeting my boyfriend - Darren at London Liverpool Street Station and then we will take the train to Stansted Airport. It's an easy journey by train to be fair and I recommend it - the train arrives right into the airport, which is very convenient. The flight is short and sweet and we only just have time for a quick drink and to read a few pages of my book before we are preparing to land. We clear through passport control with equal ease and speed and are soon in a taxi to our hotel.
OUR HOTEL
Our Hotel is The Rembrandt hotel, on Groenburgwal 27……. the pictures online show a splendid looking property, adorned with chandeliers and replica art work by Rembrandt……. Turns out photos can be quite deceiving, and my estate agent daughter would be proud of the angles the photographer used to sell and advertise the hotel. It's a very old and tired looking property, and could use a coat of paint and a carpet shampoo. Nonetheless, for the next fe days its our home and I have to say the staff are very very friendly, welcoming and helpful furthermore, the reception area has its own resident pug dog - called Rembrandt, of course. We are directed to our room - the fourth floor aka the top floor with no lifts and a very narrow staircase, made even narrower by my heaving rucksack. We literally drop our bags - to great relief of my back and shoulders, and head straight out to the town centre.
THE FIRST BAR WE FIND…..
Ok by town centre I mean to say the nearest bar. The bar much like my rucksack was also heaving - but with students and we were most definitely the oldest people in the bar - I didn’t realise how close we were to the University, but no one in the bar seems to care - maybe they are used to stray travellers passing by safe in the knowledge that said travellers probably wont make the same mistake twice. We are pretty tired and only have one drink before we head off back to our hotel with what seems like a mountainous climb through the narrow staircase, up to our room.
THE NEXT MORNING
Woken by our alarm and eager to get exploring we are up and out in almost record time. We don’t have breakfast at our hotel, so we head off out looking for food before our guided tour of the Van Gogh museum - which is booked for 15.30. Today to is pouring with rain, but I thankfully brought my umbrella with me. We head off around town and find a Hard Rock Cafe - you cant go wrong here and you know what you will get for your money. Even though its raining it doesn’t stop us getting out and about and to be honest the city looks just beautiful in the rain the buildings are sot tall and colourful they are literally glistening in with the rain reflecting off them. We have a “brunch” at the Hard Rock and a couple of drinks and head off towards the Van Gogh Museum. We have a guided tour booked and we join about 12 other people all eager to discover fascinating facts about Van Gogh and his life. To be honest I didn’t realise how prolific he was with his work - not to mention how diverse. The museum guide was a fantastic lady, with a definite affection and passion for the world, life and times of Van Gogh, she was extremely well informed and loved to hear other peoples interpretations of the art work. I consider myself a fan of Van Gogh but learned an awful lot on the tour - mostly about his personal life and about some of the inspirations behind some of his artwork. It was worth taking a guided tour and we shared and brain stormed ideas and opinions with other people in the group too - it was thoroughly enjoyable.
After our tour we strolled around the city, using the Google maps app to guide us around the 165 canals that punctuate the city frequently. We had to learn very quickly to look out for in numerous bicycles - which have right of way - of course I had heard that Amsterdam was famous for canals and bikes but had no idea just how many canals and bike there would be to negotiate around.
ANNE FRANKS HOUSE…….AND MORE
The next day is Sunday and we make our way to Anne Frank’s house. You have to book if you want to go inside the house. We haven’t booked, but I felt it would be respectful to visit the house nonetheless. I found it quite bizarre that people were outside the house and having selfies, and laughing and joking. I found it quite surreal and somewhat macabre, and dare i say a little disrespectful, but of course we all pay respects in different ways - thats just not my way, it made me ever so slightly uncomfortable. Maybe if I come to Amsterdam again I will book tickets to visit inside the house.
As I mentioned, we travel we always make some kind of pilgrimage to a local football stadium, and today is no exception. We are heading off towards the Johan Cruijff stadium. On the train there are hundreds of people all dressed in Hawaiian outfits, Leis and garlands and bright coloured clothes. People of all ages, younger than us, older than us, teenagers and pensioners all dressed up. We have no idea why. They all get off at the station with us too and make their way to the stadium. We have no clue what is going on, so we ask a couple who are dressed up and making there way to join a huge queue at one of the stadium entrances. They told us a band called The Toppers are playing there tonight. Never heard of them but in Amsterdam they have a massive following. This also explains why I was unable to book a stadium tour for today. But we can walk around the outside of the stadium and take pictures, so no so bad. We stop off for a drink in one of the bars local to the stadium and soon discover that the rock band Nickleback are playing in another nearby stadium. A quick check on Viagogo and I am able to buy two tickets for the show tonight - I’m very happy! I had waited years to see Nickleback and I was lucky enough to seem them a few days before I left for Amsterdam - at the O2, and now I have seen them twice in one week.
OUR LAST DAY
Our last day consisted of a trip to the Heineken factory - the Heineken experience/tour. The tour guide takes you around to start with and then you are left to your own devices. You can hire the audio tour to guide you further - but its pretty self explanatory. At the end you get to “compete” with other visitors to pull the perfect pint of Heineken, which is good fun, and not as easy as it looks. After the Heineken tour we took a canal cruise, by now it is raining and the pilot of our boat is grumpy and not very talkative. He does manage to point out a couple of houses that are leaning quite severely, aside from that we have no idea what we are looking at or where we are going. All very strange to be honest, but we did it and end up back where we started.
We take another stroll around, looking for somewhere to have dinner and find a restaurant called Verona. Yes its an Italian Restaurant but looks so lovely we cant walk by. The staff were very attentive and find us an indoor seat - its still raining - and bring us drinks. The food was the Italian best food I have eaten - either in Italy or outside of Italy. I had mushroom risotto (16.5 euros) it was exquisite, so tasty, well prepared and presented. The restaurant is in a great location too just off Rembrandplein. The reviews are great and the restaurant most certainly did not disappoint.
The clean streets were the first thing to strike me - the second was the bikes. Everyone knows Amsterdam is famed for its bikes and canals. I had no idea how many bikes you could have in one city. We are not brave enough to join the constant throng of peloton cyclists and foot power was mostly our chosen method of moving around the city. Its easy to get around using google maps and we travelled on the train (once) too. Train travel was easy and reasonably priced. The final thing to note is that Amsterdam is very expensive, like most cities I guess - so you need to be prepared to pay a little extra for bottled water - (approx 5 euros). Most meals (just main course) when eating out were in the region of 70/80 euros, for both of us. However I would go back to Amsterdam and I would prebook a few places to visit ie. Anne Frank’s house and a restaurant called Moeders (Mothers) which was recommended to us for traditional dishes, but it was fully booked whilst we were there.
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