Amsterdam, Netherlands

Hi there! My quick trip through The Netherlands continues into Amsterdam!

Date: Still Sunday, September 17th, 2023

I last left you after my tour of Rotterdam. After that, I hopped on a train (in the futuristic-looking train station) and headed towards Amsterdam.

The contrast between the Rotterdam & Amsterdam train stations is crazy. The Amsterdam one looks just as expected, gorgeous and historic with just the right amount of gold accents.

I arrived in Amsterdam at about 6 PM and my grandparents were in the city as they were starting a cruise! So I quickly went to my hotel to check in and drop off my bags before walking to their hotel. They had just arrived that morning so they were a bit tired and we decided to eat at the hotel. We went to the restaurant at the top of their hotel where the views of Amsterdam were incredible. We had a round of drinks before realizing they don't serve food so we moved to the ground floor of the hotel to eat dinner. It was lovely to see Grandad & Karen and hear all about their upcoming cruise!

After dinner, they walked me back across a few canals to my hotel. I was staying at the infamous Bulldog Hotel, on the edge of the red light district, right in the middle of the fun of Amsterdam. My hotel was really more of a hostel and I was staying in a room with 7 other people from all over the world. This was my first hostel experience so I was a little bit nervous but it was so fun! I met a girl from New York and we had a drink in the bar in the hotel. We met some more fun people and hung out, enjoying some fun things that Amsterdam has to offer!

Date: Monday, September 18th, 2023

The next morning I woke up nice and early and headed to my first and very exciting activity: The Van Gogh Museum! The walk there was about 30 minutes and every minute was absolutely gorgeous! Walking across the canals and passed the old beautiful buildings was awesome. I think, as of right now, Amsterdam might be my favourite city ever.

The Van Gogh Museum was also cool! I opted for the "multi-media" tour where they give you basically an iPad to walk around the museum and there are numbers associated with some paintings and the iPad tells you some stories and cool facts about the paintings. I learned a ton of things that I didn't know about Van Gogh and some really cool facts about his paintings.

For example, in his famous "Sunflowers", did you know that he actually added a strip of canvas to the top? The iPad showed me an x-ray of the painting where you can see the nails he used to extend the canvas! If you look SUUUUPER closely, maybe you can see the line in the painting. Or, in case you don't have super sight, you can google it, the internet has cool pictures of it too.

But the whole idea of art is that it speaks for itself so here are a few of my favourite pictures from the museum:

The most impressive part for me was that Van Gogh was able to paint so many things with so many different techniques to show different emotions. His ability to do self-portraits is also so impressive. This museum did a really good job at including some other pieces of art that Van Gogh took inspiration from or other artists that Van Gogh was close with. It was really interesting to learn more about Van Gogh. Also! Did you know that he painted over 900 pieces but he only worked for about 10 years?! Also, he only ever sold 1 piece in his lifetime.

After admiring so many beautiful pieces, I headed out of the museum to meet up with my grandparents before they boarded their cruise! There was a slight confusion about which "old church" we were meeting at but eventually we found each other and did a tour of De Oude Kirk.

This church was right in the Red Light District and has a very long history. It served as a place for many sailors to go pay (literally) for their sins after indulging in the Red Light district and it was vandalized during the Protestant Reformation. The floor of the church is entirely gravestones with 60,000 people buried there. The ceiling is the largest wooden vaulted ceiling in the world. This church was quite impressive.

Then it was time for me to say goodbye and Bon Voyage to my grandparents and I headed to meet my walking tour! Side note: I've really been enjoying doing walking tours in every new place that I go to get a sense of the history and other cool things about the city!

Anyway, I met my group and we walked around admiring the cool style of Amsterdam houses. Something I learned here is that a lot of the houses are very thin and tall because, at one point in history, the people were taxed based on the width of their house instead of a normal metric like square footage. Also!! Because the buildings are so thin and tall, the stairs inside are also thin and tall so moving furniture into and out of houses is quite a difficult task. But, the Dutch are very smart and most of the houses here actually have a beam coming out of the top of their houses with a large hook. So when moving, they use a pulley system to pull their couches and whatnot to the floor they want it on and bring it in through the window! So smart!

We learned more about the history of Amsterdam and about the previous Jewish neighbourhood of Amsterdam. We talked about the story of Anne Frank and walked passed her house. I tried to get tickets to see the inside but unfortunately, they sell out weeks in advance :(

As my tour was wrapping up it was starting to rain so I decided to take up the offer from my new friend whom I had met the night before and go with her to the Heineken experience! I feel like I have done a very good job learning about and familiarizing myself with the beer scene in Germany & Belgium so I needed to do the same in The Netherlands!

The Heineken Experience is a crazy mishmash of a museum, a brewery, a 4D presentation, social media booths and more. We learned about the process of making a Heineken and heard all about their "Grade A yeast", which they are very proud of. Then we went on a "ride" through the brewing, bottling and distribution process and of course, ended with a tasting.

As a self-proclaimed "beer experience" professional (I've gone to two now), I'd say that this one incorporated a lot of super cool technology to engage the guests. The "ride" included a shaking floor to make it feel like you're actually on the conveyor belts with the beer bottles and it showed you all of the places that Heineken is shipped. I can't say that Heineken is my favourite beer but the experience definitely moved it up (slightly) in the ranks.

By the time we left the Heineken experience, it had stopped raining so I decided to head over to the floating flower market (Bloemenmarkt). This consists of many floating barges filled with tulip bulbs, fresh flowers and wooden tulips by the thousand. It was so cool to see so many flowers all in the same place!

By this time it was starting to get dark and I was starting to get tired and hungry! I went out to an Indonesian restaurant for dinner (I know, in Amsterdam???? but Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony, so it kind of makes sense). It was so tasty, it may have been the best food I have ever eaten!

When I couldn't eat another bite, I decided it was getting close to bedtime. It had been a long day of exploring so I headed back the the Bulldog, FaceTimed James then fell asleep to prepare for another day in the Netherlands!

But rest assured, Amsterdam, I will most definitely be back!