An insiders view on Amsterdam

The usual highlights almost always include the Rijksmuseum, the Van Goghmuseum, canal-tours, coffee shops and the red-light district. I have to admit, these are things that are part of the Amsterdam experience. But there is so much more!
Still very touristy but also very nice (or interesting) is a visit to Anne Frank's house, the Heineken brewery and the Rembrandt house- and the Waterloo square flea market (that is, if you like flea markets).
But that's not all. There is hidden treasure everywhere. What about rollerblading trough the Vondelpark? Playing soccer on the Museum Square? Listening to one of the best classical orchestra's in the world: the Dutch Concert hall Orchestra in the Concert hall, with its famous acoustics? Just strolling around the canals looking at all the gabled houses? Or through those parts of town built by Berlage and the architects of the Amsterdam School. Visiting the beautiful Aquarium in the Artis Zoo or the very interesting Tropics museum, the Amsterdam Historic Museum, Jewish Historic Museum or Shipping Museum and of course the much forgotten but quite good Stedelijk Museum (of contemporary art).
There is much to see and to do when you're willing to leave the beaten path.

Quick Tips:

When you go out at night, don't go to the Rembrandt square or Leidsche square. All the bars there are tourist traps and for people from outside of Amsterdam. Instead, go to the Noordermarkt, the Nieuwmarkt or the Reguliersdwarsstraat. You will find more local, nice and 'trendy' bars. You can also find a lot of gay-bars in the Reguliers , just so you know.
Look after your belongings. Pickpockets roam the streets. Always close your purse and wear your wallet in your front trouser pocket.
For those who want to visit a coffee shop, beware: Nederweed is heavy stuff, probably much more so than the stuff you are used to. It's extremely sticky as a result of the very high THC contents. Although I haven't smoked it in eight years, I've heard the current stuff is so strong it almost has a hallucinating effect. So use less. You won't be the first that takes a nosedive looking like the Hulk.
Beware of cyclists. As I read in another journal: they are the anarchists of Amsterdam traffic. This is very true. They zoom past you angrily ringing their bells. I’m sorry to say I do so too!

Best Way To Get Around:

The best way to get around is by bicycle. Second best is public-transportation (the trams) and walking.
Don't ever go by car! The city-centre is very car-unfriendly with an extreme shortage of parking spots and a high number of one-way streets and traffic lights.

When you arrive at Schiphol-airport: the train will bring you to the centre of Amsterdam in fifteen minutes. It's by far the cheapest and fastest way. Mind you're luggage though. Lately there are a lot of pickpockets and purse/ suitcase snatchers on the trains. Keep a close eye on your belonging when the train makes its intermediate stops before Central Station.

When going on an excursion outside of Amsterdam, a car is fine. In no time at all you will be on the highway encircling Amsterdam, the A10. Avoid rush hour though, as traffic will get congested.

Well, as I live in Amsterdam I don't really need to try out places to stay so I haven’t. This doesn’t mean I don’t know any hotels though. First I would like to discuss the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel. Very famous for their controversial add campaigns, it is one of the most popular budget hotels in town.
Located in the centre of Amsterdam, it is very near to the State museum, Van Gogh museum and the Leidsche square and in walking distance of Dam square. It can be easily reached by taking trams 1,2, 5 or 16,24 and 25 from Central Station and get off at the Prinsengracht.
The hotel only has dormitories. These dormitories will have 4, 5, 6 or 8 beds. If going in high season the hotel will be pretty full, so you probably have to share a dormitory with others. This can be annoying as the sole purpose of many of the guests is smoking pot and weed. In the off-season chances are you can claim a dormitory just for yourself. Rooms are very simple, but then, what do you expect of a budget hotel, more resembling a hostel.
On the ground floor there is a bar and restaurant. Don’t expect a gourmet dinner here, as most dishes are deep fat fried. An enormous multi-coloured painted window decorates the bar. Main attraction in the hotel is the, recently completely renovated, nightclub. This club is exclusively for hotel guests. A futuristic media lab club has replaced the old dark club. In the sidewalls you can use Internet computers and you can request songs electronically. In the middle of the club you will find a dance floor completely surrounded by glass walls.
A 4- or 5-bedded dormitory room will cost you € 24, -, a 6- or 8-bedded dormitory room only € 21, - including breakfast. All rooms have a shower and toilet, linen is provided and most importantly: there is no curfew.
To be honest with you, the main reason I’m recommending the Hans Brinker is because a few of my friends work there. Prices are reasonable, rooms are okay, but the staff is great!

In conclusion, the main reasons to stay at the Brinker are the very central location, acceptable prices, the club in the basement and off course my friends!

One of my favourite restaurants in Amsterdam is the Struisvogel (the Ostrich). Perhaps because this is the first restaurant where I took my girlfriend for dinner, but more probably because of the refreshingly original menu en the extremely reasonable price.
The small bistro-like restaurant is located in a basement on the corner of the Keizersgracht and the Wolvenstraat. After descending from a small and steep set of steps, you will enter a pleasing, somewhat crammed room. When you haven’t made a reservation you will probably have to wait. In fact, this can be quite agreeable when you sit at the bar, drinking a very special Amsterdam beer from brewery ‘t IJ.
When you are taken to your seat by the friendly staff you will notice the only menu is hanging on the sidewall, written on a blackboard. From all the dishes on this board you compose your own three coarse dinner. There are five options for every coarse, at least one of which is vegetarian. There is one other certainty: you will always find a few dishes containing ostrich meat on the menu, hence the name of the restaurant. I personally recommend the ostrich carpaccio.
Amsterdam has a lot of restaurants in every category you can imagine. Only a few of them are capable of surprising their guests and keep doing so. The Struisvogel is one of them. Due to the smallness of the place, which can make it a bit stuffy in summer, the atmosphere is always good-natured and intimate. The staff is courteous and remains in the background. When you take into account the very reasonable price of € 19, - for a three-course dinner, it will be no mystery why this restaurant deserves the highest recommendation.

Check out De Struisvogel

Alfonso's is one of my favourite pre-drink restaurants as it is quite near to a few of my favourite bars. The two floor restaurant is nothing fancy. The interior is like most in Amsterdam: pretty plain, a few cliché items on the wall, in this case Mexican ones and small tables. Waitresses are mostly students, as in most restaurants here. This means the quality of the service varies. In general, if you act nice and make a few jokes, you’ll get excellent service. Actually, come to think of it, almost everything is pretty much cliché in this restaurant, even the menu. Taco’s, burritos en fajitas are well represented. The quality of the food on the other hand is excellent. It’s simple and tasty and it fills you up nicely when you’re going on a bender. We usually feast on the fajitas, small pancakes made of corn which you can stuff with your choice of filling, chicken, fish or beef, from your personal and sizzling pot.
In conclusion: its no haute cuisine, it is not very original, but it’s pretty cheap, rather tasty and the atmosphere is fine. Go there with a few friends, not for a romantic dinner with your girlfriend.

Mister Coco's is an all you can eat restaurant at the Thorbecke square, right next to the Rembrandt square. It's a bit sleazy and dark and the food is far from great. They advertise themselves with the slogan ‘Lousy food and warm beer’ and they aren’t really making a joke. My arteries start clogging up just writing about it. But if you are in the mood for unlimited eating Coco's is you're place. You can choose from unlimited spare ribs, unlimited chicken or a combination of both for only € 9,95. You have to order side dishes if you want to eat anything else but meat. For the record breakers among you: the record is standing firm at twelve serving (I quit after just three). Suave real Amsterdam men serve dinner. For your information, Amsterdam people are a breed of their own. They’re direct, to the point, a bit vulgar and always in for a joke. Probably the staff is the biggest attraction in this place.

This museum of modern art has had quite a few impressive expositions. A few years ago Dutch Queen Beatrix even composed one. She proved she is a great art lover with an impressive knowledge of modern art. It is rumoured she is a relatively good sculptor herself.
It really depends if the museum is worth a visit. Some expositions are simply horrible. This has much to do with disputed director Rudi Fuchs. Sometimes he has a stroke of genius, but on other occasions he blunders completely. Recent example is the exhibit of the works of actor Dennis Hopper. Though a fine actor, he is not a very inspiring artist. The biggest blunder was the restoration of the painting ‘Whose afraid of red, yellow and blue’ by Barnett Newman. It was restored simply with a paint roller and some house paint!
The permanent collection of the museum includes painting and sculptures, drawings and photography by Cézanne, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Malevich, Chagall, Mondriaan, Picasso, Newman, De Kooning, Liechtenstein, Merz and Newman. Many of which are permanently on display.
The museum is open daily from 11 AM until 5 PM. The museum is located next to the Van Gogh Museum and can be reached by trams 2, 5, 16 and 20, all departing from Central Station. Entrance fee for adults is € 5,00, children till 7 can enter for free, children between the ages of 7 and 16 pay € 2,50.

Queens day, or Koninginnedag, is a national holiday. On the 30th of April, we celebrate the birthday of the queen, or actually, the queen-mum. The celebrations in Amsterdam are the biggest, though.
Don’t make any plans when visiting Amsterdam on this day. Normal life ceases completely. All offices will be closed, public transportation within the city centre grind to a hold and trainloads of visitors will flock towards the city. You won’t be able to do anything else, but that isn’t bad actually.
Celebrations start the night before as more and more people hit the streets and start partying. The general idea is that you buy a few beers from a vendor. He’s the one carrying three hundred beers with him but doesn’t seem to enjoy himself. What he is doing is in fact illegal so when a police-officer ask him what the man is doing with so much beer, the vendor will try to persuade the officer it’s all just for him. You can’t get in any trouble buying a beer from him though. After scoring a few beers, people start to wander around. Have a look around; there are parties in the street, in bars and in private homes. The later it becomes the easier it becomes to crash a party. This goes on until the break of dawn.
When day breaks, the drunks are replaced by children and entrepreneurs. All the streets in the heart of Amsterdam are transformed into a giant flee market. You could say it’s a collective yard sale. As more and more people arrive, the drunks re-emerge, only partly sobered up. If you thought it was crowded the day before, you will get a nasty surprise. Swarms of people shuffle through the clogged streets, dressed in orange, drinking beer and having plain and simple fun. Kids sell everything they can get their hands on. Parents hover over them, trying to prevent them from selling something of real value for only fifty cents. The creative ones invent nice games of skill, like whacking a table tennis ball. The participant gets a hammer and has to hit the ball when it pops out of the tube in which it is dropped. You only have to pay a guilder and when you win, you’ll get five in return. The kids always win because only drunk adults participate. In a lot of places live music is played, in even more places, DJ’s stir the crowd.
Not only the streets but the canals are clogged too. Hundreds of boats full of people partying sail the canals. They run some risk because of the extreme shortage of toilets, especially considering the enormous amount of beer being consumed. As men’s bladders fill up, the urge to relieve themselves somewhere grows. The canals are especially inviting. Unfortunately the canals are full of boats. There is a point where this isn’t an issue for a drunk any more though.

Approximately one million people visit Amsterdam during the day.

The small city zoo Artis, in the middle of Amsterdam is definitely worth a visit. The name comes from the one remaining gate of three. It used to be ‘Natura Artis Magistra’; nature is the teacher of the arts. It was founded in 1854. Since then a lot of changes took place. Now there even is a planetarium, a geological museum, a zoological museum, a greenhouse, an impressive aquarium (my personal favourite), and a Savannah with zebra’s, antelopes and other Savannah dwellers. Upon entering you almost immediately come across one of the main attractions, definitely for the kids: a big monkey-rock. On this rock a few dozen Japanese macaques scurry around. There are always some cute young monkeys monkeying around. In the background you hear the screeches of the extremely loud gibbons. The funny way they wobble around with their long arms makes you immediately forgive them for the hellish noise they produce. A little further to the left is the monkey house where a few very melancholic Orang-utan live, along with the very funny smaller apes who like to tap on the window as you walk by (just like you would encounter in the red-light district, it makes you wonder…). There is of course also a Chimp house. There too a few young liven up the place.

Artis also has a fair collection of big cats. At the moment a couple of young male lions are separated from the females to get the two groups acquainted to each other. The last remaining Siberian tiger unfortunately died recently. It is said it died because it missed its partner, who died two years earlier. The finest specimen in my humble opinion is the snowy panther. In the back of the zoo you will find de always amusing see lions and otters. Next to them are the bears, two majestic polar bears and a mother Sloth bear and its two young, born in spring 1999.

The main attraction is still to come: in a beautiful old building an enormous aquarium is built. You will encounter many fish from all around the globe. In a few large basins, a couple of biotopes are simulated. Among them is an Amsterdam canal, with its submerged bicycles. The one who is able to spot the deadly stonefish has to let me know! Although I have spent much time staring in its basin I haven’t been able to spot it yet, camouflaged as it is.

When your time is short I wouldn’t recommend going to Artis, it will at least cost you half a day and there are a few other sites you really shouldn’t miss. But if you have plenty of time, friendly Artis is a good place to be on a beautiful sunny spring morning.

Not far from Dam-square, hidden in an alley-like street, you can find the national museum of glasses. This museum isn't to be taken too seriously but for someone who is visually challenged it is probably as amusing as the only-left-handed store in London is for lefthanders. It may not be a real cultural highlight of Amsterdam, but unlike other quasi cultural activities as the Sex Museum, Torture Museum or Hash Museum, all of which I thoroughly loath, this mini-museum is worth a visit.
I discovered this spot a few years ago when I was roaming the city practically blind, after having lost my glasses in the sea. Actually I was on my way to my regular optician at the Rokin, when I suddenly thought I saw a window full of glasses. After about an hour I re-emerged with ‘brand-new’ antique spectacles. Up till the present day I proudly wear my over a hundred years old specs from the Schubert-collection.
Next to the small but very pleasurable little shop on the ground floor, worth a visit in its own right, you can find a small exhibit on the first floor. Here, the visitor is taken on a journey past 700 years of history, art and culture surrounding glasses. I found it to be an amusing and educational trip. For example I found out the Dutch word for spectacles, ‘bril’, is derived from the element Beryllium. It appears once this element was used to fabricate glasses.
For someone wearing spectacles and who has a spare hour a visit is definitely worth your while, if only a small glance around the shop.

A little energy left? Join in a game of soccer!

When the sun breaks through the clouds, Dutch people come out of hiding and go outside. Most of them prefer to sit on a terrace and drink a coffee or a beer, but quite a lot of them look for a small stretch of grass, lay down there coats as goalposts and start playing soccer.
Usually, if you ask, you can join in. But mind you! Play is pretty fanatical. In the parks, that is Vondel park (near the Leidsche square) and Oosterpark (next to the Tropics museum, trams 3, 9 and 14 stop there) and on the vast lawn of the Museumplein (behind the Rijksmuseum) the big boys play.
Friendliest is the Amstelveld, squeezed in between the Prinsengracht and the Kerkstraat, near the Amstel River, tram 4 stops around the corner. On this concrete pitch complete with iron goals almost always mostly teenagers and students play a game. These games are the most accessible en most friendly. And the best part: if you score you hear the rewarding loud ‘clang’ of the shuddering iron ‘net’.

When you’re in the mood for something completely different (and you’re from the Commonwealth) go to the Oosterpark. There, almost every Sunday a game of cricket is played. I don’t really know if this game is really accessible, as I never really understood the game, but if you do, it’s worth a try.

Public Transportation in Amsterdam, the Trams.

Public transportation in Amsterdam is pretty good, especially when travelling within the old City centre, the ‘Grachtengordel’. From almost any spot in this three-quarter of a circle you can reach a Tram-stop within five minutes. Maybe this isn’t such a feat when you realize you can cross the diagonal of this circle in about 30 to 45 minutes on foot, but still. This year the dented and familiar yellow trams will be replaced by state of the art new ones. During the week, on normal hours, Trams aren’t extremely crowded and you usually can sit down. This is quite comfortable as Tram chauffeurs tend to accelerate en decelerate very quickly. If you can’t sit down grab a pole or one of the loops hanging from the ceiling. You won’t be the first to tumble over as the tram starts to move. During rush hours and in the weekend Trams get crammed. But don’t worry, even when the Tram appears completely full, you can always squeeze in a few more!

Why should I buy a Strippenkaart?

Now for the trickiest part of Public Transportation. How to pay? There are a few options. First, you can buy a ticket with the conductors, sitting in the back of the tram or with the chauffeur. These tickets cost €1,40. They are a rip off, but I will come to that later. In some cases, there isn’t a conductor sitting in the back. How to pay in that case? Most locals don’t, that’s why in more and more Trams the conductor is reintroduced. As an honest citizen you off course do pay. This requires a day ticket or a ‘Strippenkaart'. To put it simply: all tickets but the ‘Strippenkaart’ are a rip off. Remember the ticket costing €1,40? The same trip will cost you €0,79 or even €0,77 when using the card. Also, don’t buy a day ticket. It will cost you €5,20 for one day. Now comes the hard part: explaining why this is a bad deal. A Strippenkaart with 15 strips will cost you €5,90, one with 45 strips costs €17,40. The Netherlands is divided into public transportation zones. The centre of Amsterdam, and quite a bit more, is one zone. When using a Strippenkaart you stamp one strip as a starting tariff and one strip for each zone you intend to travel. So for almost all locations you want to visit in Amsterdam, which are all in the same zone, you stamp two strips. Once stamped, you can use all public transport within this zone for one hour. So for the price of a one-day ticket you can travel almost seven consecutive hours within the centre of Amsterdam. The chances you will do such a thing are very slim. As quite a lot of attractions are within walking distance of each other you will never have to stamp seven times, unless you refuse to walk. So use a Strippenkaart. You can buy it at Central Station, or at almost all supermarkets, tobacconists or tourist shops.

How to use the Strippenkaart?

When you get in the Tram you can have your card stamped by the chauffeur or the conductor. Just present them the card and say you want to travel one zone. If you get into a Tram without a conductor, you can stamp yourself in one of the yellow machines hanging next to the doors. Just fold your card in the way that the second strip beneath the last stamp is on top. Put it in the slot of the yellow machine. You’ll hear a ‘ping’ and your card is stamped. Sounds difficult, but it's quite easy!