Amsterdam, Venice of the North (Netherlands)

For the Easter weekend, my cousin Carine and I decided to go to Amsterdam.

We booked our stay for 4 days, from Saturday 16th to Tuesday 19th April 2022.

We took the train at Gare du Nord on Saturday 16th April at 10:25 am and arrived in Amsterdam at 1:44.

Day 1

Our hotel was located a 40-minute walk from Amsterdam railway station and about 15-20 minutes by train from the railway station. We took a tram then we continued on foot to the hotel (about 7 min walk from the tram station), The hotel is also very close to the city center, about 10 min walk (just next to the tram station).

We checked in and dropped off our belongings at the hotel. We rested a bit and then went for a walk.

We were staying at Alfred Hotel. The room we had was much smaller than in the photos on the Booking. com website and was quite noisy. Cars and motorcycles could be heard on the street as well as the sound of pipes when other customers went to the bathroom or showered.

The room was in the basement and had a small window so high that it didn’t serve much purpose with its mini curtain.

The breakfast offered was not worth its price at all, nor was the room. Breakfast included slices of cheese, salami and ham, Greek yogurt, bananas/apples, omelet, bacon, bread, jam and butter. Orange juice wasn’t really one (drug taste) and the hot drinks machine didn’t even offer chocolate.

In short, we went out for a walk around the Moco Museum (Museum of Modern Art) and the Rijksmuseum (National Museum of Fine Arts, Crafts and History of the Netherlands) and its garden. We did not visit those museums that day. Moreover, museums are quite expensive here, it is recommended to look at the offers on the internet in order to have discounts.

The garden was very nice, there was a fountain with many jets of water that you could go into and be surrounded by the jets, it was a lot of fun.

Before strolling in the garden, we stopped to eat a hot dog right across the street.

We then continued our walk by the canals and had a drink in the Café Hans en Grietje.

We then went to dinner at The Seafood Bar, a restaurant serving seafood, fish and shellfish. It was really delicious! The restaurant being quite popular, we couldn’t get a table, so we ate at the bar. It’s not as pleasant as sitting at the table because you eat in front of the waiters. However, since they were all very busy, it was less disturbing.

I forgot to mention that when we arrived in Amsterdam, we were very surprised to see how many bicycles were parked on every corner. Personally, I knew that Amsterdam is a very bike-friendly city but I didn’t think it was that bike-friendly. There are bicycles really everywhere, so much so that you feel like there are more bicycles than cars. Bicycles also seem to have priority over pedestrians, you have to be careful when crossing the street or even when walking because cyclists come from everywhere. There are also plenty of bike paths. There are even car parks dedicated to bicycles, such as the multi-storey car parks that we have in France or other countries. Cyclists don’t wear helmets and neither do bikers.

Amsterdam seems to be a pretty eco-friendly city with its many bicycles and also its many electric cars. There is a range of cars that seems to be the equivalent of our old Autolib.

There are also a lot of tiny cars (one or two seats), much smaller than Smart cars, which are probably unlicensed cars used by older people (or younger people as well).

Day 2

That second day, we did a lot of things.

We took the direction of the Red Quarter, a kind of equivalent of Pigalle (in Paris) that we know and therefore very lively in the evening.

On the way, we came across the Flower Market which we also wanted to do during our stay. It is a beautiful market where you can find a multitude of bright and shimmering flowers. This is a place to visit if you want to come to Amsterdam.

When we left the market, we finally arrived in the Red Quarter but there was nothing really special about it since it was daylight.

We visited the Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum, the marijuana museum. You can see a kind of greenhouse in which the famous plant grows, and you can also buy marijuana-based cosmetics.

While leaving the museum, we came across a shop selling the famous space cakes. There were brownies (which we bought), cookies, lollipops and lots of other marijuana food products.

My cousin and I don’t like chocolate cakes too much but we really wanted to try space cakes. We had not crossed France and Belgium to avoid trying the experiment!

So we each bought a brownie; my cousin took the “very strong” which is supposed to make you “stone” and I took the “medium” level which is supposed to make you “happy. ”

We didn’t want to test the cookies because there were too many and we couldn’t bring them back to France because it’s illegal.

There were even sweets with hallucinogenic mushrooms!

The space cake cost 15 euros, it’s not cheap!

For fear of having any side effects, we decided to eat our cakes (only half of them) when we returned to the hotel in the evening.

We then headed to the Koninklijk Paleis, the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, and then turned back to take tickets for the Heineiken Experience, a museum dedicated to Dutch Heineken beer.

There was no tickets left for the museum alone, so we took a coupled ticket to visit the museum, take a walk on the canals of Amsterdam and climb to the top of the A’DAM Lookout, a large tower from which you have a view of the whole city. The ticket cost 45 euros.

As we had some time left before entering the museum, we sat on the terrace to have a beer at Pannenkoeken Restaurant De Carrousel. In the middle of the restaurant is a carousel, it’s funny!

The Heineken Experience was the visit we enjoyed the most during our stay. The museum is very complete: first we are told how beer is made, then we land in a kind of simulator in which we have the impression of being a bottle of beer dragged into a packaging line (the ground vibrates beneath our feet and screens project images of beer bottles and movement). We then have a glass of beer and are taught to say “cheers” in Dutch (proost). Then you come to a room with a lot of mirrors and sort of desks on which you can mix music. Finally, we land in another room with an atmosphere such as a nightclub where we still have two more glasses of beer (this time less pronounced taste and lower alcohol content because they are probably cut with water).

In short, the experience is really great, especially for beer lovers!

After leaving the Heineken Museum, we went to take the boat for the walk on the canals which was very nice and allowed us to discover the city from a different angle.

The boat dropped us off at the foot of A’DAM Lookout. This tower reminded me of the one I had visited in Chicago because the goal was the same, to climb to the top of the tower to have a view of the whole city. It was possible to swing with our feet in the void, but we did not want to try the experiment, moreover, it was not included in the entrance ticket, it was an extra.

We then returned to the city centre and dined at Wagamama, an Asian restaurant where we ordered delicious ramen.

On our way back to the hotel, after taking our shower, we ate half of our cakes. We then went to bed because we were tired from our day. The cakes didn’t seem to have any effect on us, unless it acted during the night.

Day 3

We wanted to visit Keukenhof known for its flower beds, including tulips.

So we tried to book the day before an excursion there (entry ticket + bus ticket). Whenever a site said there were a few places left, at the time of payment, the site announced that there were no more places. After half an hour, we managed to get seats only for the entrance to the garden and we thought we would arrange for transportation.

When we were in the Red Quarter the day before, we went to a shop selling tickets for various tourist attractions. The billboard said that there were plenty of tickets for the garden, unlike all the websites we had visited. Even the official website of the garden stated that everything was sold out until the day we left! That’s weird, though.

We didn’t want breakfast at the hotel that morning, so we went for lunch at CT Coffee & Coconut, a 3-storey hotel offering breakfast packages. I had pancakes and coconut milk chocolate and my cousin had tacos with a classic chocolate.

The way we went to the restaurant was not the way we went to the city centre. The houses in that area made me think a lot of British style houses.

We then went to the Albert Cuyp Market but it didn’t seem to be open that day, probably because it was Easter Monday.

So we went back to the city center and bought tickets to the Moco Museum, the museum of modern art. We were able to get a discount by searching the Internet.

The museum was nice with its many exhibitions including some of Banksy’s art that I had already seen in Paris. There were also several rooms with animated works of art, it was very beautiful.

In the afternoon we took the subway and then a bus to Keukenhof.

The garden is really beautiful and huge and the varieties of flowers are such that you don’t know where to look anymore. However, I was a little disappointed because the photos of this park that I had seen on the internet did not seem to match. I’m talking about the pictures of windmills. In the garden, we saw only one mill and it didn’t look the same as in the photos.

The visit was still very pleasant, especially because it was sunny.

In the evening we had diner at Bar B where we ate burgers and sipped delicious cocktails. The atmosphere in this restaurant was really nice, as for a nightclub atmosphere, and the staff was adorable.