Artful Amsterdam

After a few amazing days in Switzerland, it was time for us to pack up and move on once more. We caught a train from Interlaken to Basel (about 2 hours) to get to the airport for our flight to Amsterdam. It was my first time flying EasyJet and it wasn’t as terrible as I had envisioned. I know these super budget airlines charge you for every single thing, but for such a short flight it was good enough and the seats were surprisingly spacious. I did have to pay for our bags, though. No biggie, it was still cheaper and faster than taking a train from Switzerland, which would have been 10+ hours.

I was a little sad to leave Switzerland, but my credit card appreciates it. I would love to go back someday!

We arrived to Amsterdam around 4:45 pm on Thursday and caught a bus to the stop nearest our hostel. The ride took about 40 minutes because of traffic. We checked in and dropped our stuff off. The room is pretty small but very functional. We have bunk beds… Kiley gets the top because she is the youngest 😆

We ventured out for some dinner, and decided on getting some dim sum a short walk from our hostel. It turned out to be kind of expensive (but not as expensive as it would have been in Switzerland!) but it was super delicious. I could eat Asian food every day. After dinner, we took a short walk around the area and saw some of the canals, then headed back to the hostel to rest.

Friday… We slept in, then started some laundry. We got brunch at a place called Bakers & Roasters. It was delicious. I got eggs and avocado on toast and a mini stack of pancakes. After eating, we stopped by the hostel to pick up our dried laundry and put it away, then Kiley wanted to check out a cat museum thing she found online, called KattenKabinet. It’s an art museum entirely dedicated to cats, and there are two actual museum cats that we got to pet while visiting! There were paintings, drawings, and sculptures of cats – some pieces by Picasso and Rembrandt among others! It was a short visit but a cute one.

After getting our cat fix, we headed over to the Moco Museum, which is a modern art museum. This museum was neat, it included works by Banksy, Andy Warhol, and others, plus there was an immersive experience in the basement.

After enjoying all the art at Moco, we wandered the canals a bit and came across the Bloemenmarkt. This is Amsterdam’s giant tulip/flower market where you can buy flowers and seeds for various plants. We browsed a little bit, then decided we were ready for some dinner – and it started to rain! So we found a place nearby called Bar-B Burgerbar, and we had a great dinner. My burger was super delicious. Kiley got wings and mozzarella sticks. We found it interesting that the mozzarella sticks were served with truffle mayo as a dipping sauce. I haven’t seen that before (this particular combo, that is) – but it totally worked! The mayo in Amsterdam (and maybe Europe in general) is way tangier and tastier than American mayo. A popular snack here is fries with mayo – which I discovered on my first visit to Amsterdam in 2015 and I have loved it since then. We also had a couple local beers. I had an Amstel Radler, which was a very sweet, lemon-y beer. It was borderline too sweet for me, but definitely a good summer drink. My second beer was better – I tried a Liefmans fruit beer – it had a mix of fruit flavors, raspberry, blackberry, and some others. It was delicious. I will have to see if it’s imported to the states at all. After eating, we were feeling tired so we decided to call it a day and walked back to the hostel for an early night in.

Today (Saturday), more museums were on the agenda! I accidentally slept in longer than intended, but we were still able to get over to our first museum of the day by 11 am. We took the tram to Amsterdam Centraal – I forgot how big that train station was! – then caught a free ferry to the NDSM Wharf across the water. From there, we walked to the STRAAT museum – a museum dedicated to street art and graffiti. This place was awesome! It features original artworks by over 150 artists. We really enjoyed looking at all the artwork. Many of the pieces were created on site, so that’s cool. We saw one person working on a new piece there too! There are a lot of photos below of the museum.

After getting our fill of street art, it was time to feed our bellies. We found a chipotle-esque place nearby and I got a burrito bowl which was great. A nice change from the last couple times we had Mexican here in Europe – it’s been pretty mediocre overall. I told Kiley I think we really take Mexican food for granted in the US!

After lunch, we got back on the ferry to head back to the city center. We had tickets for the Van Gogh Museum at 3 pm, and we still had a couple hours to kill so we decided to just walk from Amsterdam Centraal to the museum district. It took us about 30-40 minutes to get over there, then we got a quick snack of fries with mayo for me and churros for Kiley before going into the museum!

The Van Gogh museum was the one thing on my list that I didn’t get to do last time I was in Amsterdam, so I’m glad I could cross it off this time. Seeing original works by Van Gogh was really cool, but the museum itself was pretty crowded – I would say nearly Vatican-level crowded. It was sometimes hard to see the art or have time to appreciate it before another group of people blocked your view again. But I did enjoy it, and am glad I had the opportunity to go.

After the museum, we decided to take a break and hang out at the hostel for a little bit before venturing out again for dinner (which ended up being ramen). We did stop for one more snack on the way back to the hostel though! Stroopwafels! Yuummmmyyyyyyy.

Tomorrow we’re gonna visit the Anne Frank house and check out some other stuff… more later!

P.S. … just because I want to share this… in Amsterdam they have these places where there are giant vending machines with hot food in them… I think it’s wild, haha. But good for a quick snack or simple meal!