We arrived at the Schiphol Airport around 9 PM from our flight from London. After immigration, we proceeded towards the train station which is located at the lower level of the Arrivals section. The fare from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal station is 4 Euro. I tried to purchase the tickets at automated kiosks at first but was unable to do so with my chip and signature card. I then went to the ticket booth and the same credit card worked fine this time. In my experience, the chip and signature cards work most of the time at the credit card readers but in some cases, you need to go to the manned kiosks or booths where you can do the same transaction with your signature.
Instead of boarding a train going to Amsterdam Centraal station, we boarded the wrong train which was going to Ulestracht Centraal. But since we were on vacation and not pressed for time to be somewhere, it was ok :).
After finally figuring out which train we needed to be on, we arrived in Amsterdam Centraal. Since it was already quite late at around 11 PM, we decided to have a quick dinner at one of the fast food joints at the train station and then started to walk towards our hotel. One really good thing about being in Netherlands is that there is very little language problem. Almost every local we met there spoke English.
We were pretty tired by the time we got to hotel and went straight to bed.
Day 1:
In the morning we walked from our hotel to Jordaan district of Amsterdam. It is one of the most upscale, residential neighborhoods in Amsterdam where one can find many art galleries, boutique art shops, specialty shops and restaurants.
We passed by the Anne Frank house which is actually outside the Jordaan district. There was already a big line in front of the house. Even though it is rated as one of the top “must see” attractions in Amsterdam, we had already decided to skip it during our initial planning for the trip.
After walking around in the Jordaan district for a couple of hours, we made our way back to Dam Square. This historical site is surrounded by the Royal Palace, Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) and the Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum and the National monument along with a department store and a hotel. There are plenty of tourists (and hoards of pigeons being fed by them) in the square. This area is ideal for people watching.
After spending some time just wandering around the square, we walked back towards the Amsterdam Centraal station. Reederij P. Kooij, one of the renowned tour operators of canal cruises has one of its locations right next to the station. One of the best ways to get oneself oriented in Amsterdam is a canal cruise. The tour lasted an hour or so and it was pretty enjoyable. The only negative I can think of about the cruise was that since its translated in 6 or so languages, the content in each language is not as thorough as you might want it to be.
After the cruise, we walked back to Dam square.
It was close to evening so we had some frites (local favorites) and hot dogs for dinner.
After dinner we decided to check out the famous (infamous??) DeWallen neighbourhood (otherwise known as the “Red Light District” of Amsterdam). There are actually 3 different red-light district in Amsterdam but Dewallen is the one most visited by tourists. It was quite a unique experience walking the streets there and gave “window shopping” a whole new meaning :). There were so many couples and even groups of female tourists wandering around the area, it didn’t have that seedy, icky vibe that a red-light area otherwise might have.
Day 2:
In the morning we walked from our hotel to Bloemenmarkt. It is famous for being the world’s only “floating flower market”. Don’t take the word “floating” literally as the barges are actually static. All of the shops were pretty much selling the same stuff – flowers (mainly Tulips) and souvenirs.
After purchasing our obligatory souvenir magnet, we walked towards Museumplein which is right beside Rijkmuseum, the national museum of Netherlands dedicated to arts and history. Pretty soon we found the popular “Iamsterdam” sign and being it early in the morning, the number of tourists in front of the sign was still pretty sparse. It was time for some pictures and selfies !!
We ended up spending over a couple of hours there, just sitting in a garden next to the sign and the museum and people watching.
On our way back to the hotel we had some lunch and spent a couple of hours sitting beside a canal and just admiring the beauty of this city. Karen wanted to walk around the city some more so we ended up walking some more around the neighborhood close to our hotel.
Pretty soon it was time to go to the airport to take our flight to London where my parents were flying in to accompany us for the remainder of our Europe trip. We went back to Amsterdam Centraal station to take the train back to Schiphol Airport.
Amsterdam is a very beautiful city and after we were done with our Europe trip, it definitely appeared to be among our top two favorite cities in the trip (along with Venice).