Our first post COVID international trip! Well, maybe it's post COVID? It's hard to tell. We escorted my parents from DC to Amsterdam for a short adventure before they joined up with their friends to take a Viking river cruise through central Europe.
We absolutely loved Amsterdam! It's a beautiful city, easy to navigate, and full of delicious things to eat. We stayed at the Doubletree Centraal Station, which was a very convenient location for a short stay where we all needed to end up on the train (us back to the airport :( and my parents on to Paris). It was located immediately across from the train station, which allowed us to easily grab trams to tourist activities, and had lovely views of the canal.
During our stay we went to the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum - both amazing collections in their own right. We went on a canal tour with our new friend Carl and his beautiful boat (https://www.withlocals.com/experience/private-boat-tours-amsterdam-welcome-drink-amsterdam-canals-56434f76/), and took a tour of the Heineken factory. Spring is a gorgeous time to visit Amsterdam - everything was in bloom both in the city and in the countryside. The Keukenhof gardens are simply astonishing! We were just past the prime of many of the tulip fields, which are cultivated not for their flowers but for the bulbs, so they get cut early. But there were still a good number of fields of beautiful flowers. We also visited the Royal Delft factory, where we all learned how to identify true Royal Delftware. Good to know for not getting scammed in the future! Finally, we got up at the crack of dawn to visit the windmills of Zaanse Schans. A light fog lingered over the marshes, and the birds (geese, pheasants, ducks and song birds) were chattering away. We were the only ones there at such an early hour, and we got to enjoy a beautiful sunny crisp morning observing the windmills by ourselves.
We ate at two particularly lovely restaurants. The first is Moon, a very slowly rotating restaurant located in the A'Dam Lookout Tower offering a great meal, with the most delicious fries any of us have ever eaten, and spectacular views of the city. Our final night we went to De Kas, which I must say is not for the faint of heart or pallet! It is a seasonal prefix menu with no alternatives, and does feature some rather exotic items. The night we were there the main course was lamb neck, for instance. But every item was delicious, if not spectacularly so (I'm looking at you, goat cheese mousse). And the building itself, in the City's historic central greenhouse in the middle of a park, was extremely beautiful and soothing. The pace of dining in Amsterdam is...leisurely. Which we ended up enjoying, because it allowed you to relax and really savor the food and the moment. Although it did mean that the night we sat down to eat at 8pm we didn't finish until after 10:30, which was perhaps a bit too late!
We definitely want to go back to Amsterdam. We only scratched the surface of the city, and of the Netherlands more generally.