Amsterdam, April 2015

Amsterdam is an iconic place to visit (for a few very different reasons!) and although I enjoyed it, I'm not sure I fell in love with it. I think it was one of the busiest places I've visited, and it felt very touristy in my opinion - people were queuing for hours to get into most of the attractions and my friend and I waited 2 hours to get into the Van Gough museum. Definitely pre-book any tickets for attractions you definitely want to see as you'll be feeling very smug when you arrive. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to visit Anne Franks house as the queue to enter was too long but I'll make it my first port of call whenever I return next.

We finished off our day by having a bike ride around the surrounding bulb fields around Keukenhof which felt like a fitting end to the holiday. A word of warning to keep in mind is that the bike breaks are actioned when you peddle backward instead of having a break on the handlebars. It's surprisingly hard to get used to and we had a few near accidents along the way!

Good food is definitely an important part of a holiday, but we struggled to find good restaurants for evening meals while we were there. Try to avoid eating around some of the main squares if you can as they are very expensive. On the other hand, the street food options are really good - I would recommend trying the Dutch pancakes called Poffertjes which are sold all over the city and they are delicious. There are lots of other sweet treats available (waffles were another favourite of our trip) but for a good savory treat, there are loads of small street food type stalls that simply only sell chips with mayo, good for a quick refuel amongst the site seeing!

Amsterdam is definitely somewhere you can do on a budget. Our hostel was slightly dodgy, to say the least, but we expected as much as it was slap bang in the middle of the Red Light District. Our room was a 10-bed dorm and the shower cubicles were slightly weird-smelling (best not to think about) but the service and on-site bar were great so I can't really knock it, I mean you get what you pay for! Transport links from the airport to Amsterdam central are great and well priced, but I would recommend taking a good map or saving some data on your phone up as the streets are quite confusing at first.

We did an obligatory canal tour on our first day which was probably too relaxing after a 6am flight from London (Not sure how much we were awake for...) but it's a good way to see the city. My highlight of our stay in Amsterdam was doing a cheese and wine tasting evening which was a great laugh. The session is completely laid back so you don't need to worry about not having a clue about anything technical if you're like us, although it did feel like we were back at school for some bits, mostly because of the giggling!

One of the main attractions which prompted us to visit Amsterdam at this time of year was to visit Keukenhof. It's an awesome day out in which you can visit all the beautiful bulb fields that bloom at this time of year. It really was a beautiful thing to see and the scope of the place is really amazing, we were there all day and probably didn't manage to cover everything. Of course, because it is only open for a few months a year it is a busy event, but the high levels of tourism don't take away from such an amazing celebration of nature.

Overall, it's no shock that Amsterdam is a great tourist attraction for stag and hen dos, but there really is so much more to see culturally and is definitely worth visiting in more civilised circumstances. Still, I think the most important thing to remember is that the length of queues for big tourist attractions is frustrating and any short stay should be pre-planned and executed tactically... Amsterdam is not somewhere you can enjoy on a whim.