Travel With Me: Amsterdam, Netherlands (Day One)
For Ryan’s 30th birthday, I offered to plan a surprise trip for him. He had some general options to choose from (beach, hiking, city, cold/hot climate), but the rest would be revealed only when we were in the airport on our way there. As a huge Christmas fan, something that Ryan has always talked about has been going to the European Christmas markets, and since his birthday is mid-December, this felt like the perfect opportunity for this trip. He ended up blindly choosing from one of my Christmas market itineraries (among the choices he didn’t pick were Munich & Salzburg, Vienna & Budapest, Vienna & Prague, and Switzerland & Strasbourg). Right after passing my first qualifying exam for my PhD, we were off to experience the Christmas season in two new (to us) European destinations: Amsterdam and Brussels!
Accomodations/Transportation: Amsterdam
We stayed at the Apollofirst Boutique Hotel, which was in a quiet neighborhood a little outside the normal touristy areas of Amsterdam but about a five minute walk from a transit stop. The room was cozy and clean. The only complaint we had was that the breakfast was crazy pricey for a fairly standard European breakfast buffet, at something like €20 per person.
As for transportation, Amsterdam was very easy to navigate using their version of the metro system. Across from the central train station (where you arrive from the airport), there is a small building where you can buy a Gemeentelijk Vervoerbedrijf (GVB) card. We bought a three-day pass for about €25 per person. You tap the pass when you enter and exit the tram—just make sure you enter and leave through the correct doors. We learned the hard way that some of the doors were one-way only.
First Stop: Kattenkabinet Museum
After a long overnight flight and jet lag, I didn’t want to overload our first day, so I chose a small and eclectic museum to dip our toes into the famous museum culture of the city. The Kattenkabinet was founded in honor of the owner’s cat, John Pierpont Morgan. Its special collection shows the role of the cat in art and in culture through the centuries, with everything from paintings to lithographs to photographs of famous writers and artists with their cats. Ryan is a real cat lover, so I knew we needed to give this quirky little museum a visit. They even had a resident cat that seemed to be guiding us from room to room through the exhibits.
Ice Village Christmas Market
For dinner, we stopped at our first Christmas market, which was the Ice Village in Museumplein. We sampled some cheesy potatoes (thank Ryan for the very flattering picture), accordion-style potatoes, and Ryan had mulled wine, or glühwein, as it’s known there. We also got some gorgeous prints (one for us and one as a gift) from Elles, a local Dutch artist; we both loved how detailed and bursting with color her work was (not to mention, the painstaking effort of creating these pieces on-site to capture a specific moment in time). Below is one of the prints we purchased!
Festival of Lights Canal Cruise
Our final stop was an evening canal cruise to see the Festival of Lights, which is an annual Christmas event where artists install huge art pieces along the canals. The cruise was a little over an hour in a heated boat, and our tour guide was very funny and knowledgeable. We learned a lot of Amsterdam history as we enjoyed homemade glühwein and took in the breathtaking views of the canals lit up at night.
Thanks for reading!
Up Next: Museums, Museums, and More Museums (& Our First Michelin-Starred Restaurant)