Holiday: Day 8 - Amsterdam
We’d had a quick sample of Amsterdam the previous day and so we had a brief idea of what we planned to do with our full day, however I don’t think we ever planned for it to end up being one of the highlights of our trip.
We were up at a fair time and for some reason the distance from the hotel to the station seemed significantly less today than it did the previous day when we were lagging all of our bags, nevertheless we made it to the station and bought ourselves 24 hour tickets to be able to hop on and off the metro and trams as much as we liked.
Our 2 seater e-bike
Our plan was to head to the central bike rental agency and hire a bike so that we could join the thousands of Dutch people who ride around the city each day, we all found it very invigorating that people of all walks of life got around the city by bike, and so we wanted a piece of this.
Once in the shop we couldn’t help ourselves and resorted to hiring 2 x 2 seaters Super 73 style bikes, we figured this was the easiest way to get around with two kids as a 7 year old probably isn’t super wise on the streets of a foreign city. I’ve never ridden any form of e-bike before, but i’ve always considered them a bit lazy, but in these circumstances I actually think that the option we went with was perfect.
Amazing tall skinny houses of Amsterdam
First up we headed straight to the park where we could get ourselves used to the bikes. The positioning is a little different to usual especially when you have a person on the back of it, but me and my pal (Isabelle) soon found ourselves pretty comfortable and we were cruising around at a pretty constant 25kmh.
We didn’t really have anywhere in particular to go, we just wanted to see where the streets took us, but we covered a fair chunk of Amsterdam across the next 3 hours, taking main roads for a bit and then when we’d see an interesting side street we’d go down there. Something that I am amazed by is how clean the place was as well as how modern/renovated all the houses are. I don’t know if that’s just how Amsterdam is or whether its super afflueantbut all those tall skinny houses that look a solid hundred years old all look like they’ve been renovated and are mint.
Once off the bikes we decided to have a quick stroll to the Heineken factory. I’m not a drinker but my favourite beverage of sorts these days is the Heineken Zero, their non-alcoholic option. I don’t think they brew all their beer here but as a branding exercise its pretty impressive, and there were loads of people there doing the factory tours and buying from the shop. All kudos to you Heineken and your world wide dominance.
By this stage we were pretty tired and hungry, so we wandered the streets looking for something to eat but didn’t really have anything that took our fancy, until we stumbled back upon the Heineken Brewery and found a place across the road called the Carousel (or something like that). We went inside and devoured some Dutch pancakes and washed them down with a cold Heineken each. This was about as Dutch as I think our food got during this time, except for maybe the delicious sausage roll at the station, though I’m not sure that’s perfectly Dutch.
Amazing Dutch pancakes
The last thing we decided to do was hop on one of the pedal boats and tour around the canals for the next hour or so. I can honestly say that I don’t think I have ever done this, but it is the most intense leg session ever, I genuinely think I will be a better cyclist because of it. The only problem is the faster we went the more water our boat took on, so unfortunately we had to pull ourselves back a little and keep it contained. But we loved it, Amsterdam from the canals was amazing and really finished off our two days there as a highlight, even if we didn’t all do an equal amount of work and we almost got taken out by a ferry.
But we safely got back on land, where we found ourselves a quick bite to eat for dinner and then made our way back to our hotel to ready ourselves for another long day on a train and onwards to another city.
Michael