In my industry, while not unheard of, it is still a bit surprising when someone says that they are going all the way to Europe for just a weekend - even if it's a long weekend. Let's be honest, the thought of spending 12 + hours on a cramped plane in a matter of 3 or 4 days is a little disheartening. When you find fares for around $300 though, you take the plunge and go for the weekend as was the case for me and a coworker.
Fall of last year we happened to catch fares on Icelandair to Amsterdam for about $300 each. This fare did not include food on the plane or headphones, but hey, those are small costs in the grand scheme of a ticket. We decided pretty quickly to take advantage of this fare and booked ourselves on a flight for St Patricks Day weekend.
Thankfully, working in the travel industry, we are also privy to pretty good hotel rates all over the globe - for this trip we went with an SPG property named the Apollo Hotel which was absolutely beautiful and in what turned out to be an ideal area of the city.
For this trip, since my coworker found the fares, I let her take the reigns for what exactly we'd see and do during our time in the city. We got pretty lucky in that during my last trip abroad (to Antigua), I had actually met a family from Amsterdam and we have kept in touch, so we had locals to help us find things that couldn't be missed or that we may not have heard of otherwise. It also worked out well in that they were able to take us out of the city and drive us to some other small towns near Amsterdam that would have been a pain to get to using just public transportation.
We left from IAD Thursday early evening and landed in Amsterdam Friday late morning. We knew we wanted to get IAmsterdam passes for our stay (something I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone going as it is both free access to museums and sights like the paris museum pass but it also includes unlimited use of public transportation for its duration as well!) so we got in line to pick these up in the airport before continuing to the city. Though we had purchased these ahead of time online, it still took ages to get through the seemingly short line to pick them up (I kid you not when I say we had all of 5 groups ahead of us and the line took nearly an hour).
After getting our IAmsterdam passes, we continued over to where the trains were to purchase tickets to take us into the city (as those are not included with the IAmsterdam pass), these were cheap and painless to purchase (well, as long as you pay attention when you get to the person selling the tickets - don't zone out or only half pay attention or you WILL piss them off). We went ahead and purchased our ticket to take us into the city as well as the ticket that we would need to take us back to the airport when our trip was over - we figured that this would be easier than trying to figure out how to purchase them on a machine at the city station since we had a person helping us here, we just had to be very careful not to lose the return ticket before it was time to use it.
The train ride in to the city was pretty simple, though if you didn't pay attention to the stop you were told you would need it could get a bit confusing. My coworker and I didn't quite agree on if the train would actually take us to the station we were told that we needed, so we got off at Centraal Station and used both the metro and trams to get us to the closest stop to our hotel. Amsterdam I found was similar to Rome more so than places like London or Paris in that the metro (the underground portion) was miniscule and only had a small handful of lines that didn't reach much of the city. Instead, trams traversed the bulk of the city more like cities like Strasbourg in France. These trams are very easy to use if you've ever used one before (I've experienced them in France and Germany, my coworker had never used one) - you just have to remember to scan in and out and hit the button to open the doors.
Before I get into what exactly we did during our time, I think it's important to offer a few reminders / advice in use of the IAmsterdam pass (and just visiting a city in general when your timeline in short).
1) READ the information that comes with your pass. Make sure you understand what is included and what is not. Make sure that for the sights you know that you want to visit that you read the blurbs specific to them as there are times that there is very important information there! (case and point - if you want to go to the Van Gogh museum using your pass, you MUST sign up for a time online ahead of time and get your ticket that way - it is the only way to use your pass for free entrance. Do NOT show up and think 'oh well I'll just get in line because I didn't bother to do my due dilligence'.)
2) If you know that there are very specific sights that you feel are musts on your trip, look them up online to ensure you know any pertinent information (such as hours, days that they are regularly open or closed, seasonality - some places are closed for several months of the year, special events that may shut the facility down during your visit or leave only part of it available to the public, etc.)
3) If you know that there is somewhere you just have to go, but it's known to be very popular, go online and make sure that you don't need to get tickets ahead of your visit - there are places that will not sell tickets on site as they are too popular/busy!
4) If you are going to visit the Anne Frank house, please allow me to further emphasize the importance of going online to their site WELL in advance of your trip. This was a MUST see for my coworker (not for me as I hear over and over again that it is a bit overrated), however, she didn't do any looking into of the site. I happen to stumble upon the fact that they are doing renovations currently, and as such, they are only selling tickets online. Since I was the one to find this information, she asked if I would go ahead and look into purchasing our tickets - well I looked about a week and a half before we left....keep in mind that our trip was in mid-March.....there were no tickets available until the end of May!!! Needless to say, because she didn't look into the museum early enough, she did not get to visit even though for her it was a bit of a must see.
Okay, now back to our trip itself!
Friday after we finally made it to the hotel, we dropped off our bags, freshened up and decided to head out into the city. We first went out to the museum area - my coworker was hoping to quickly go through the Van Gogh museum, but we hadn't gotten our tickets yet so after I told her what the paperwork had said for that, we went over to the Rijk museum and did a quick pass through so that she could see a painting that she was wanting to see in person (I've studied plenty of art history in my time - that's part of what my study abroad to Rome was, but I honestly can't remember who the piece was by or what it was called - it was very large and had a place of honor in the museum but I was less impressed by it and more impressed by a swan painting I found on the way in).
After my coworker had her fill of the painting we came in for her to see, we left the museum and began a leisurely stroll towards Dam Square. We were set to meet up with the family I had met in Antigua, but we had a bit of time to blow so we figured we'd walk and hope we found it easily enough versus taking public transportation. This way, we'd get to see more of the city - the only thing we didn't really take into consideration was just how cold it was. (During our entire trip, the high was about 25 degrees Fahrenheit and there were strong winds, the first day and parts of the next two, there were also snow flurries.) When we finally go to Dam Square, we still had a bit of time to blow so we found ourselves some hot beverages and sat and people watched. Once we got close to the time we were to meet them, we began looking for the old Dutch pub that they told us to find them at.....well, we managed to get lost looking. After finding some wifi in an H&M, we pulled up a map and eventually found our way to the pub.
This pub was tiny and SO cute! There were old barrels lining one wall with the bar itself along the other. We tried a drink here called 'A Walk in the Woods', supposedly so named because a man used to tell his wife that he was going for a walk in the woods, but rather would come here and have this drink and so they named it for him. We also tried the famous Dutch cheese, which is an aged Gouda that tastes like a strong cheddar cheese - it was very good! We stayed here talking with the family for a bit before continuing on our way to dinner.
For Dinner, the family we were visiting with took us to this wonderful Indonesian place. We were told that this was as 'authentically Dutch' as it got, as Indonesian food has such popularity in the country (Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony and as such).
After dinner we took an Uber with the family back to the dads car (which he had left near his office) - it turned out that this was their first ever Dutch Uber! (Fun fact : Uber is only available in Amsterdam within the Netherlands) Once we got back to his car, he drove us the rest of the way to our hotel where we bid them goodnight and said farewell to the mother as she would have to work the rest of the weekend and would be unable to spend anymore time with us during our stay.
Saturday we took the day to ourselves to explore the city. We got our tickets and went to the Van Gogh museum (a cool museum, but you really don't need to devote that much time to it). We also took the time to take the pictures that we wanted of this museum area (this is where the infamous iAmsterdam installation is).
After this we found our way over to Dam Square again to join a 'free walking tour' put on by Sandemans (it's very possible I've spelled it wrong). It was great walking through more of the city (despite the frigid weather), we got to go through parts of the red light district and other areas that we had yet to visit, but to be brutally honest, I felt like the tour itself was a waste of our time. The tour guide was not the most knowledgeable (the dad of the family we were with the previous night was able to provide better information) and I just felt as though it was an inefficient way to experience the city. It also isn't free, even though the name might have you think otherwise, as the guide expects everyone to tip. We had a person leave the tour mid way through because she couldn't handle the cold (at that point it was probably about -3 degrees Fahrenheit once you took into consideration the wind chill), and the guide went on an almost 5 minute long bit about her leaving and made it very clear he was unhappy that she obviously wouldn't be tipping him.
Once the tour was complete we walked more of the city (passing the Anne Frank house) and finding a little outdoor market where we got freshly cut and fried fries - these were so good! We continued along back towards the Rijk museum as we had seen one of the canal tours had a stop there and our IAmsterdam cards included one canal cruise.
The Canal cruise was great. The one we chose happened to be hop on, hop off (though our ticket was strictly for one round trip, no stops). It was so peaceful, and I was already so exhausted from our day that I actually dozed off for a bit on it. We ended up deciding not to take the entire round trip ride, and instead got off at the stop by the A'dam Lookout Tower.
This tower was a site that I had been told ahead of time by the family we visited that we should add to our must do list. Your pay for a ticket, and then ride their crazy light enhanced elevator to the top. We happened to go on a VERY windy day, so we were nearly the only ones on the roof - but the views of the city were amazing. Atop the roof, they also had a swing called 'over the edge' you could pay to ride - this looked very cool but with how cold and windy it was, we opted not to try it out.
This was looking up at the tower, the off centered square at the top was the lookout.
Looking out over the city (Centraal Station with Amsterdam painted across it).
They also had this cool horse up on the roof, you were allowed to sit on him but between the winds and my layers of clothes it didn't feel safe enough to try.
If you went back inside and down a floor, there was also an indoors viewing area as well as a bar. Here, they also had some cool small glass floor areas where you could see straight down.
After finishing here, we took the public ferry back over to the city side and began looking for food. This proved to be far more difficult than we expected. Eventually we found a place where we were able to get Dutch food that was fairly affordable.
On Sunday we decided to meet back up with the family to explore some areas outside of the city. First, we went to Zaanse Schans - a beautiful area with many old windmills.
Next we were off to Volendam.
After Volendam, they took us to this really cute town that I unfortunately did not get the name of.
Our last stop of a long day of town hopping was the 'island' (more like peninsula) of Marken which is primarily a pedestrian only town!
After finishing the day sight seeing, my coworker and I went out to a pasta place for dinner were the food was great and exactly what we needed after being on the go all day! (Also it was great having comfort food after the delicacies we had tried during our visit to Volendam - we tried smoked herring with onions and pickles on it as well as smoked eel! Personally, I was not a fan of either.)
The next morning we quickly made a last minute stop at a cheese shop that had been recommended to us to buy some of the awesome Dutch cheese that we had had during the trip. After this, it was time to head back to the airport to return home once again.