Planning a trip to Amsterdam

Our Indian movies have made this place quite popular among us. The city has a vibe of college life. I mean the buildings are ancient like our universities, the crowd is young, you will find the art in one form or another. And I think this is the reason why it is famous among students. So, let’s find out what Amsterdam offers except the beautiful canals and bridges.

Transport and Stay: –

 We visited Amsterdam from Berlin, Germany and it was only a 6-hour journey by the famous German ICE trains. These trains run up to 300 Km/hr and you will not feel their speed at all. So, it was an Easter weekend, and the day was Friday, we were tired from doing our daily chores. It was good that our train was leaving at 2:30 pm in the afternoon, so we had some rest. The journey was beautiful, I would have to say that I loved Netherlands’ beauty and there is no other place like this I visited before. It was 8:45 pm when we reached Amsterdam and you can use your same train ticket to exit through the Amsterdam Central station.

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Then to reach the hotel, search google maps and you will see, that you can go by trains labeled as A, B, etc. So, these are trams just outside Amsterdam Central and you can buy their ticket from inside the tram, or you can download the GVB app and buy the 24-hour or 3-day ticket. The good thing is even you can use your Wise card everywhere inside Amsterdam. It was a ride in itself; you will feel like you are on a roller coaster. The same feeling, I had when I used to travel on a public bus in Kerala.

We were staying in Hotel with the name New West Inn and the stay was ok. One thing I liked about the hotel was it was in a residential area 30 minutes away from the central. So, it was peaceful. I know you guys must be thinking that I am going to visit the city and avoid the city crowd. I do not know but I like places with more nature and less crowd. So, the hotel costs us around 586 Euros for 3 nights. Amsterdam was costly that weekend. So, I would suggest you book your stay in advance. We missed booking a hostel by one week because we were traveling with a group of 6 more people.

Amsterdam Itinerary: –

Day1: Explored the City

Canal Ride–

How you can miss the city’s heart, so we first started with a canal tour. In the morning, we bought some fruits and baked stuff from the nearby supermarket for a little breakfast. Then we took a tram to the Annie Frank House station (do not remember its name). From there, we started our canal ride with a hosting company “Lovers Cruise” which was priced at 14 Euros/head. But I will not admire them because we had to wait for more than an hour for it. It could have been better if we could start it from Amsterdam Central because Central is their starting point.

Otherwise, the ride was fun, it was a big boat with chairs and tables inside. There were headphones provided to hear the guided recording. You will see the famous ancient buildings and get to know their little history. It could have been better if there had been a real guide and if they could have food or drink. But yes, we enjoyed the views, and Guru was able to click a lot of pictures of the architecture.

Try City Street food

After taking that ride, we just walked through the streets. Tried a lot of famous Dutch Food like Dutch fries, Stroop waffles, and croquettes. We also explored some candy and souvenir shops. I bought two keyrings and a fridge magnet. We had our lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the middle of the city, but it was very bad and costly. I was greatly influenced by the number of bicycles people use here. You can find the bicycle lanes everywhere in the city. It is good for the environment and health. But I did not like the smell of weed and smoke in the streets. There are a lot of cakes made up of weed and sold here at normal shops, so be prepared.

RedLight District

In the evening, we explored the famous Redlight District of Amsterdam. It was crowded a lot, there were two narrow streets with people flooding them. You can hardly see any space and there was all smoke and weed around which was destroying the exploring experience. So, talking about the place, you can see the girls, dancing in the glass walls just like in the Bollywood movie “queen”. The city has a different vibe in the evening with only red lights just like in movies. But you will see a lot of restaurants and street food here too. Then there were various sex shows being played in theatres and there was a huge line in their ticket section. After a hectic walk across the city, we went to our hotel by 9 pm because our next two days were booked already with places to visit.

Day2: Village Giethoorn & Zaanse Schans near Amsterdam

Giethoorn

We woke up at 6 am the next day because the bus for the tour we booked was leaving at 8 am and it was specifically written that they would not wait. All of us were very sleepy but we managed to get the tram and reach it before time. We booked the tour by the name “Giethoorn and Zaanse Schans Windmills Day Trip from Amsterdam” by Viator. Its cost was around 100 Euros per head and it included -an hour boat cruise as well.

I was very impressed with our tour guide, we had a small introduction about each other and then he told us about the history of the Netherlands. We got a lot of info about how the people here were able to survive this below sea level area with so many floods. And how the construction companies are famous all over the build for their architecture and well-design. Then he told us how the Giethorn village was built out of a need to transport peat. The peat diggers took peat from the soil for farming and later cut peat to dry. But they were converted into lakes with floods so they had to build canals to transport peat and boats are the only mode of transport in this area.

The bus stopped on the way for some coffee and restrooms. We reached around 10 am and we started with a cruise because with time this place gets crowded. We were early so we were able to see beautiful views and our guide was very informative and interactive. After that, we were left on our own to explore for like two more hours. For both of us, we started shooting our content for photos and videos while walking across the village. We were not left with any time to eat because of less time. So we thought of eating in the next village.

I had never seen a place like Giethoorn in my entire life. There were beautiful canals and houses shaped like huts everywhere around. Everything was so peaceful till the tourist crowd increased.

To be continued…

Read more travel blogs from the travel section like below:-

https://www.theexplorerdiary.com/plan-a-trip-to-new-york-city/