Where The Wildings Are

Amsterdam is a city of many things for many different people, which is probably why it is such a popular tourist destination. We spent four nights there with my mum and brother and we could have stayed there for four weeks and we still would not have been able to do everything! Although, we would need to be rich to stay in Amsterdam for that long!

As many people have asked us since we have been back, we did not go in any of those special coffee shops, we did not smoke weed, eat a dodgy brownie or pay for sex with a prostitute from the Red Light District! We just did normal, safe PG rated touristy things…

This included a bicycle ride around Vondelpark, the Maritime museum, visiting the Royal Palace, going on a boat ride along the canals and riding the tram a lot.

 

Emma and I spent less time with my mum and brother than I expected. They holiday in a very different way to us. They headed out early, stayed out all day and only returned to the hotel after our evening meal. We can’t do 10 hour days like that! We set off a bit later, spent the day out, returned for a rest and a cuppa at the hotel before heading out for the evening meal. They also went to a lot more museums than us, between them they went to the Van Gogh museum, Rijksmuseum, Tulip museum, Banksy Museum, Film Museum, the Tower and big swing and to two of the islands across the river, which can be accessed by the free boats that come and go all day. They must have been crapping money on a daily basis.

Amsterdam is my family’s kind of city with all the museums, culture, vegan restaurants and kookiness. Me and Emma are also a fan of the museums and culture, but we were not willing to pay 17 Euros each to get into the Rijksmuseum or Van Gogh museum and I’ll just come out and say it, (well Emma said it to be honest) she doesn’t actually think that Van Gogh’s paintings are very good…controversial I know, but I agree with her somewhat. Sometimes I think that being an expressionist is just an excuse for not being very good at painting.

Amsterdam was trying too hard to be trendy. A vegan friendly restaurant we went to on the first evening didn’t have any menus. The older woman who owned the place basically said we could have tapas or meze, which is practically the same thing isn’t it? Or some simple chicken dish for a cheaper price…as there wasn’t a menu we couldn’t remember all the dishes she was reeling off and she kept trying to force lamb on us, telling us we didn’t like it as we hadn’t tried proper lamb before. My family saw this as laid back and fine, but me and Emma like to know what we are ordering (especially when paying a lot!) and not to be talked down to by a pretentious older woman who thought she knew a lot more than she really did. We really do not like excessive trendiness and kookiness, sadly so many people these days try so hard to fit these two categories and a lot of them appeared to be in Amsterdam.

Although Amsterdam is an exciting city, full of culture and things to do, for me and Emma it was overcrowded, overpriced and overrated.