Amsterdam was one of Jackie’s few required stops on our trip. In 4th grade, she dressed up as Anne Frank and wrote a report on her for “Famous Person Day”. Since then, she has wanted to visit the Anne Frank House and Museum. As we were already nearby in France, Amsterdam was easy to add to our itinerary.

On arrival, our knowledge of Amsterdam barely extended beyond pretty canals and the Anne Frank House. Once we stepped out into the city, we were immediately enamored. Our first coffee was very good, to be followed shortly by a brunch so excellent we went 3 times in 5 days. The following days were filled with relaxing, slow touring as we savored our time in the picturesque city.

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While Amsterdam has fewer tourist attractions than many of the largest cities in Europe, we found visiting to be a pleasure. In our experience, that lack of activities can add to the experience by forcing you to slow down and explore more deeply. The Canals and Anne Frank house topped our list for favorite touristy activities while the restaurants and cafés constantly impressed us.

Touring

Canals

Amsterdam is encircled by a belt of picturesque canals that are lined with houseboats and bordered by quaint houses. This area is, justifiably, a UNESCO world heritage site which, according to our various guides, makes it virtually impossible to modify anything. For example, switching windows from single to double pane glass can be met with hours of paperwork and red tape.

Amsterdam’s canals were built in the 17th century as a means of improving transportation in the city. At the time, the Netherlands had a massive fleet and trading empire which brought a wealth of goods flowing through the city. These goods were carried from ships to/from storage via the canals. Close examination of the pictures below reveals large hooks fixed at to the top of many houses. In the past, these hooks were used for unloading goods from the canals to the houses (or vice versa). Today, they are occasionally used to lift furniture into houses via the windows.

Most of our touring was canal focused; whether wandering aimlessly or on a tour, the canals never ceased to deliver. Our favorite canal activity was an excellent, 90 minute canal cruise given by a local. He has lived in a houseboat for over 20 years and his love of the canals shows in his enthusiastic knowledge of the area. We loved relaxing as we viewed houses from the water. At the same time, we were super impressed by our guides ability to answer 90 minutes of Wyatt grilling him with questions about the canals, Amsterdam, and the Netherlands.

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Anne Frank House

As mentioned in the intro, the Anne Frank House brought us to Amsterdam and we’re happy to report that it lived up to our expectations!

In 1940, immediately after conquering the Netherlands, the German army started restricting Jewish peoples rights and freedoms. Concerned with these developments, Anne’s father (Otto Frank) collaborated with his business partners to devise a plan for his family to go into hiding. Together, they converted a few floors of their workplace into living quarters that were not visible from the street. Later, in 1942, a letter arrived demanding Anne’s older sister report to a forced labor camp, prompting the family to go into hiding. For the next two years, the family of four lived with four others until their discovery and deportation to concentration camps in 1944. Sadly, Otto Frank was the only survivor.

Anne Frank wrote a thoughtful, well-written diary during their time in the house. After returning to the house from a concentration camp, Otto rediscovered the diary, read, and published it.

The Anne Frank house is a solemn but fascinating museum which we enjoyed immensely. Each room in the museum presents just enough information to keep you engaged and curious about the next room. As we walked through, we couldn’t help but remark at how difficult it must have been to live there for 2 years. All things considered, the space is larger than we expected but it would have felt cramped with 8 people. On top of the cramped space, the attic held the only unblocked window and the only view of greenery, a tree in the street outside. Finally, they had to be silent during the day as people working in the building could have reported them.

The Rest

We spent our remaining time at various activities and tourist sites across Amsterdam.

• Walking Tours: We joined 2 very good walking tours which reminded us how much we enjoy them. Since then, we’ve decided to start every city with a good walking tour.
• Gymnastics: After 3 long weeks without gymnastics, we were feeling deprived. Fortunately, Jackie’s amazing and found an excellent gymnastics facility to practice at in Amsterdam. We were absolutely giddy after our first practice and ended up practicing 3 times in our 5 days in the city.
• Moco Museum: We don’t enjoy art museums that are full of old paintings. A prime example: we got bored in the Louvre in one hour. Instead, we try to find weird or historical museums, which we love. Moco delivers on the “weird” front with relatable street art from a variety of artists.
• Body Worlds: In the “weird museum” vein, we stopped at body worlds and delighted in examining deconstructed human bodies. Wyatt, in particular, enjoyed putting a visual to body parts he knew the name of but had never seen before.
• Cafes: Relaxing (read: people watching, reading, blogging, and trip planning) at a coffee shop is one of our favorite activities, no matter what city we’re in. On a related note, we found a very good coffee shop, De Koffieschenkerij, located in part of an old church which we spent time at twice.

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Observations

Bikes

Amsterdam is a city built for bikers, not cars or even pedestrians. Indeed, the prevalence of bikes is the most striking cultural difference between Amsterdam and other cities we’ve seen. Proving the point, no city street lacks bike lanes. For example, many streets are composed of 2 bike lanes only, with no lanes for cars.

The constant stream of bikers flying down the streets is a physical hazard to the inattentive tourist. We’ve seldom felt so much like the clueless tourist as we did nearly getting run over by bikers while crossing some of the larger streets. (6 lanes; 2 for bikes, 2 for cars, and 2 for trams. Chaos!)

On top of a lack of lanes for cars, the city discourages driving further by charging 7 Euros per hour for parking. Happily, we didn’t have a car. The video below gives you a taste of the number of bikes in the city. That’s not even a large parking lot of bikes, we saw many that were 3 times the size.

Trickers and Gymnasts

As mentioned above, we fit 3 gymnastics practices into our short time in Amsterdam. Of those, 2 were open gyms populated by trickers while the third was gymnasts. We remarked on how similar tricking culture in Amsterdam is to U.S. tricking culture. Similarly, Amsterdam gymnast culture matches U.S. gymnast culture. In both places,

• Gymnasts listen to pop music while trickers play techno, rap, and R&B.
• Gymnasts have excellent gym etiquette while trickers have no boundaries. Jackie literally had a tricker crash into her beam right as she was about to perform a skill. Another sat on a mat under her beam just before she did a leap.
• Gymnasts take the occasional cell phone video of a skill they are working on while trickers have cameras, go pro’s and smartphone cameras rolling constantly.
• Each gymnasts practice centers around the skills or events they are working on while trickers center their practice on the group they are hanging out with, practicing whatever that group happens to be attempting that day.

Cheese Shop Density

Amsterdam’s old town is absolutely packed with cheese shops catering to tourists. They resemble Dunkin’ Donuts (for those of you on the east coast) or Tim Horton’s (for those of you in Canada), sitting on virtually every corner, and occasionally across the street from one another.

Coffeeshops

Coffeeshops are not, in fact, coffee shops. Instead, they sell Marijuana and related products. That’s not our scene and, fortunately, we were forewarned to go to café’s for coffee so we never had any mishaps trying to get a morning coffee.

Wyatt had no idea, but, marijuana is effectively legal in the Netherlands. We say “effectively” because it’s surprisingly complicated. The EU did not support the Netherlands intent to legalize Marijuana so, instead of making it officially legal via laws, they made it effectively legal via policy. (i.e. Not enforcing most of the laws making it illegal.) That sounds fine but is further complicated by their choice to enforce laws targeted at Marijuana producers. So… it’s fine if you consume it, it’s fine if you sell it, but you better not grow it or you’re going to jail. 

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English Menu’s

We found it surprisingly refreshing to have access to English menu’s again after 3 weeks having to look up half the words on every menu. Conveniently, the Netherlands is very English friendly with most Dutch people speaking excellent English and most menu’s/signs written in English and Dutch.

Overall

Amsterdam is a city after our hearts. It has delicious food, excellent coffee, gymnastics, is very cute, and has a unique culture/history. All of these features meant Amsterdam reminded us of our favorite cities, making us loathe to leave, despite our next stop being a beautiful villa in Croatia.

Bonus: Hostel Boat

We stayed at a hostel on a boat for a few of our nights in the city. It was cute and unique but also kind of terrible (loud, hot, tiny, out of the way). You win some, you lose some.

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