Amsterdam is already one of the more photogenic cities I’ve been to, but spring adds something on top of that. Tulips show up everywhere, tucked along bridge railings, spilling out of planters on canal-side streets, filling museum gardens. It’s the kind of detail that changes how a familiar city feels without changing anything structural about…
How much does your hotel actually matter on a trip to Amsterdam? I’m pretty sure that it’s more than most people plan for. Amsterdam is small, but it’s cut in half by water and laced with one-way streets and tram lines that don’t always go where you’d expect, so the neighborhood you pick shapes almost…
Amsterdam gets a strange mix of reactions before people even book their flight. Some hear it’s one of the best cities in Europe. Others hear it’s overpriced, overcrowded, and not worth the hype. Both of those reputations exist for a reason, and the honest answer sits somewhere between them. Part of the confusion comes from…
I didn’t expect food to become one of the biggest parts of my Amsterdam trip but it did. Let me just say, I ate fries almost every day, tried a different sauce nearly every time, and somewhere along the way, found a genuinely good döner, thanks to Amsterdam’s sizable Turkish community. As a Muslim traveler,…
Here’s the thing most week-long Amsterdam itineraries won’t tell you: seven days in the city itself is too many. You’ll run out of museums by day four and start padding the rest with things you wouldn’t have bothered with on a shorter trip. The better use of a week is to keep Amsterdam as your…
Three days sounds tight for a capital city, but Amsterdam is one of the few places where it’s genuinely enough. You can walk across the middle of it in under an hour, which is exactly why so many people get it wrong. They look at a map, decide everything is close together, and then try…
My first trip to Amsterdam wasn’t originally supposed to be a proper visit at all. I was already in Europe for work, and I extended the trip by a few days specifically to add Amsterdam on rather than heading straight home. Once I made that call, I ended up staying five nights total, enough time…
Amsterdam is one of the easiest cities in Europe to gamble on during a long layover. Schiphol Airport has a railway station sitting directly underneath the terminal, and trains reach Amsterdam Centraal in around 17 minutes, several times an hour. On paper, that makes leaving the airport look almost effortless. The train ride is only…
