I am a big fan of city breaks so after my Copenhagen trip ( day 1&2 day 3&4 here) I had to book another for the summer! My friend Emma and I decided to go on a Amsterdam adventure this July for 4 days. We stayed at The Student Hotel Amsterdam City* that we booked through Expedia and our flights directly through easyJet. The hotel was a couple of metro stops away from the central station so it was super easy to get there from the airport. We had 96b hour IAmsterdam cards which I would highly recommend if you want to see a lot of museums and attractions because we saved so much money on entrance fees and transport.
We arrived pretty late in the day so we just settled into the hotel and explored the street around it and decided to try out the hotels restaurant called The Commons. I had a stone baked pepperoni pizza and Emma had a burger which she claims is the best burger she's ever had!
On our first full day we headed to the Museumplein area where the big museums of Amsterdam are. We had timed tickets for the Van Gogh in the afternoon but decided to check out the other museums beforehand. Starting off with a visit to the IAmsterdam sign for the typical tourist photo which starting the day early meant you could get a pretty good shot without tonnes of other tourists in the background.
We started our cultural mission of the day with the Moco Museum which its main focus is modern and contemporary art, with features artists like Banksy and Icy and Sot. This was the gallery I was most excited to visit and I was not disappointed! It was so cool to see some of Banksy's originals, including the Mickey Mouse sculpture from Dismaland.
We then had some spare time before our Van Gogh slot so we decided to visit the Rijksmuseum which is the Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam. Featuring big artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer with The Night Watch and The Milk Maid being key pieces here. The grounds of this museum are also really nice just to relax in on a bright summer day.
After some lunch we headed to the Van Gogh Museum for our time slot. It was really good to see the story behind his work laid out floor-by-floor to see his progression and inspirations. I would thoroughly recommend a visit to this museum! We went to the Diamond Museum after this one but I only took sparkly videos on KiraKira+ so I can't show them on here but it was interesting to learn about the processing of diamonds and history behind some royal crowns!
Being pretty tired out from all the museums we ate at the Commons restaurant again on our second night.
We set off on the second full day with a relaxed day at the zoo I mind but it did progress into a little more than a zoo visit. The Artis zoo was only a 20 minute walk from our hotel so we set off early and passed so many pretty canals on the way.
The Artis zoo was a super lovely day out and we spent about 4 hours exploring all the parts, even caught the sea lion feeding time. This is the perfect chill day activity and would highly recommend a visit.
We then headed to the Botanic garden for a little look around. My highlight was seeing the pineapple growing and the palm house. I do want to invest my time into keeping more botanical plants but my track history isn't the best!
We then decided to rest our legs and take a canal tour to see Amsterdam from a different view by water. We took the Amsterdam Circle Line from City Hall which was an hour and a half round route and it was so magical to see the city from this view point. Our canal skipper was super knowledgable and added his own facts in as well as the prerecorded tape. This is the perfect way to see the city and would perhaps put this as a must do when you visit Amsterdam.
We ate at Vapiano for dinner that night because it was close to where we got off the canal tour by City Hall, then headed back to get well needed kip ready for day 3 of our adventure!
As this post is getting rather long I shall be dividing it into day 1 & 2 and day 3 & 4, so keep an eye out for the next part of our adventure!
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