Last weekend Luke and I jumped on the speediest plane ever from East Midlands to Amsterdam (literally an hour!) and we touched down at around 11am on Saturday morning! After a quick train and tram ride into the centre, we arrived at Prinsengracht, our canal that we were staying on. It was zero degrees the whole time so we needed our hats and gloves, that’s for sure. I was searching for a few blog posts with these type of tips but I couldn’t find any that had real-life, real-person things to do!
1. Stay Somewhere Different
I would massively recommend staying on a house boat! We used HouseboatSuite.com and the guy who owns the boat was super helpful and when we got there the interior was exactly as it was on the website and the boat was spotless. It was more expensive than your standard hotel room but it was 100% worth it.
2. Visit Kessens
Kessens was the first and the last place that we ate in Amsterdam. The clean, modern design drew us in amongst a load of dingy pubs on the Rozengracht and the interior didn’t disappoint. It was perfectly our taste – the staff even all had stripy tops on, we loved it instantly. For our first lunch in Amsterdam we had croquets filled with cheese, deep fried and on bread. It sounds insane but it was so tasty, exactly what you need after travelling. We went back for our last lunch too, before we travelled back to the station and I had mixed mushrooms in a cream and mustard sauce and we also tried traditional Dutch ‘Bitterballen’ which were veal and herbs in a roux and deep fried. Literally the tastiest little snack ever.
3. Eat at Bagels & Beans
A friend of mine from work had been to Dam a week before we went so I asked for some recommendations for food. He recommended Bagels & Beans and it didn’t disappoint! I had a warm tomato bagel with goat’s cheese and bacon topped with pine nuts. It was amazing!
4. NEMO – The Science Centre
NEMO is essentially the National Science Centre in Amsterdam. Full of kids but so much fun if you just want to mess about for a few hours. All the exhibits are in English as well as Dutch so it’s easy to get what’s going on. We had a nice few hours out of the cold!
5. Visit Jordaan
Jordaan is the vintage-shop hoarding and cool cafe spot of Amsterdam. I really liked it here, it was loads quieter than the Red Light District (which I liked because it was totally different, but I preferred the nicer bits of Dam). There was a cool little pub called Cafe Des Pels that we sat in for hours.
Hopefully if you’re off to Amsterdam soon this has been helpful. We really enjoyed our time away even though it was freezing cold. Have you been on any mini-breaks recently that you’d recommend?