With no doubt I can say that Amsterdam is in the list of almost everyone. It was our last destination of euro trip and we planned to spend 3 days in Amsterdam to explore its canals, museums, coffee shops and much more. Amsterdam was quite windy and cold as compared to other places we have been on the trip and it was already raining when we landed. One interesting thing that I noticed about Amsterdam airport was that a small part of runway is like a over-bridge on the road where other vehicles are passing by which was surprising imagine yourself driving a car and a place is crossing the bridge just above you. It was around 1:00 AM when we reached Amsterdam and went straight ahead to our friends place where we were staying.
We started our day with the beautiful Vondel park. It’s absolutely huge and full of cherry blossom, you can see people cycling, skateboarding, roaming inside the park. There are places where many are playing football and other sports as well. One can easily spend half a day in Vondel park exploring its beauty. We picked up a place sat there for some time, ate some ice-cream, enjoyed the picturesque views and saw people playing football and one of my friend even joined them. Vodel park is a place where you can see people smoking marijuana but that is true with almost every other place in Amsterdam. There are 4 I amsterdam sign in and one of them is near Rijksmuseum which is just 10 mins walk from Vondel Park so we decided to head towards it and take the mandatory shot with “I amsterdam” but it was very crowded more than we expected, people sitting on top of almost every letter and capturing the snaps we also took some photos and decided to come later at night when there will be less crowd and take some more pics.
The sun was already set by the time we left I amsterdam sign, I read somewhere that the best time to go to the red light area is in between 10:00 – 11:00 PM so we headed towards Amsterdam central which was closest tram station to red light district. If you are planning to travel using public transportation its better to take a one day or two day pass as that will be cheaper rather than paying for individual trip. We wandered around the Red Light District, admiring the dark and seedy-looking alleys and streets and as expected this was the most touristy place I found in Amsterdam. If you visit red light district both during daylight and in night you can clearly see the difference and how the place lightens up and changes its ambiance so drastically, remember not to take any photos in Red Light District as it is considered offensive and is not considered well among travelers. We roamed around the district for some time and then decided to call it a day.
As Amsterdam is so famous for its museum we first decided to visit Van Gogh Museum but unfortunately all the tickets were sold out for the day so we decided to go to Stedelijk Museum which is dedicated to modern and contemporary art and design. Though I am not a museum kind of person but Stedelijk had some-kind of vibes that made me enjoy it. The museum is divided into sections of contemporary art, modern art, architecture, film and video. You can easily spend 2-3 hours and get the taste of art and design. There is a small park just outside the museum where we spent some time and then went roaming around the city for some time. As Amsterdam famous around the world for its legalization of marijuana we also visited the famous bulldog coffee shop which is also claimed to be the oldest coffee shop in Amsterdam. The coffee shop turned out very different as I expected there were some tables to sit outside and inside looked more shady so we bought some pre-rolled marijuana and sat outside for sometime. As we felt hungry in some time we went to one of the pizza shop and had our dinner.
Next day we went Anteverp which is around 2 hours drive from Amsterdam to have some Belgium beer and Belgium waffles details about which I will share in another post. We were back by evening and as we still haven’t clicked pictures with I Amsterdam we decided first do that. After clicking some pictures we visited Holland Casino even though we do not gamble but we still decided to at-least go have a look and come back. It was third time I was visiting any casino and this was the biggest I had been in. There were all kinds of games going on including poker, blackjack, roulette, slot machines and some which I didn’t even understood. After spending some time we went to out friends place to pack stuff as we had to leave in morning.
Amsterdam is such a beautiful city. It compares to nowhere that I have ever been before. The canals, traditional dutch houses, boats houses are so aesthetically pleasing. Amsterdam is very well connected through all channels including canals, road, tram and cycle lane there are places which you can visit through either of these medium. It has everything from museums of all sorts, parks,coffee shop, red light district and probably this is the reason all sort of people come here and everyone falls in love with the city. One thing that I didnt like was that the museums in Amsterdam are costly and you will have to shell out a lot to visit them that’s why we kind of missed the famous Heineken Experience, Rijksmuseum, canal tours any many other things. But as they say its better to have a reason to come back and with this hope it was the end of our memorable euro trip.
The Itinerant Analyst 
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