4 Days In Amsterdam – Here’s What We Did

Amsterdam is one of our new favorite cities. We recently spent a few days there at the tail end of a trip to the UK and had a great time in the capital of the Netherlands.

Shae and I love New York City, so it was almost surprising that we enjoyed Amsterdam so much because in many ways it’s the antithesis of New York. There are no skyscrapers, very few cars (although there are cycle lanes galore) and it has an extremely relaxed vibe.

Having said that, New York and Amsterdam do have some things in common. Both have some beautiful architecture, great food and excellent public transportation.

Here’s everything that we got up to during our four days in Amsterdam.

Day 1

We arrived at Schiphol airport at about 3pm, collected our bags and took a train to Centraal Station which is in the center of Amsterdam. There are direct trains from the airport to Centraal Station that only take 15 minutes, so it’s simple to get to the city when flying in.

We stayed at the DoubleTree Amsterdam Centraal Station which, as the name suggests, was only a short walk away. You can read our full review of the DoubleTree here, but a quick summary – great hotel, excellent location, fantastic rooftop bar and it’d be our first choice if visiting Amsterdam again.

We were immediately impressed with how cute the city was.

Shae and I were both pretty tired, so we took a quick nap before heading down to the hotel’s Executive Lounge for free drinks and appetizers. Shae had Diamond status with Hilton at the time which is why we had lounge access.

We were still fairly hungry, so we went out for dinner after that. Shae had looked into nearby restaurants and there was a Thai restaurant a few minutes walk away with good ratings, so we headed in that direction.

We soon found ourselves on Zeedijk. It’s one of the oldest streets in Amsterdam and seemed to be restaurant alley. It’s on the edge of the red light district but wasn’t at all shady.

The restaurant we’d planned on eating at had a line out the door, so we decided to give it a miss. Wandering around, we came across a Vietnamese restaurant called Little Saigon and figured we’d give them a try instead.

Best. Decision. Ever.

Their food was absolutely delicious. Shae got the 4 beef pho and loved it. I tried some of her broth and it was incredibly flavorful and had a good kick to it thanks to the red chilis that are hidden in the photo below.

Despite how tasty her pho was, I didn’t regret my choice as my dinner was delicious too. I ordered the chicken spring rolls and beef vermicelli salad bowl; the photo below doesn’t really do justice to how much food you get.

Little Saigon had bottles of hoisin sauce on each of the tables, so I added that liberally as I looooooove hoisin sauce.

We also stopped off at a liquor store before heading back to the hotel. We got a bottle of wine for Shae, while I decided to try a bottle of whiskey made in the Netherlands. It wasn’t the best whiskey I’ve ever had, but much better than I was expecting.

Day 2

We did a little bit of walking around in the morning, then took a day trip to Keukenhof Tulip Gardens as it was tulip season during our visit. Check out our post with 45 photos of what Keukenhof is like.

We arrived back at the hotel that evening just in time to snag some free drinks and appetizers in the Executive Lounge, before heading up to the hotel’s SkyLounge.

After having a couple of drinks, we were feeling a little peckish and so we did something sacrilegious – we went to McDonald’s. Now, before getting too Judgy McJudgerson on us, I should say that we love visiting McDonald’s in every country we visit.

OK, I’m probably not helping myself here, but hear me out.

The reason we like doing this is so we can experience each country’s take on McDonald’s as they always have a few different menu items. When we lived in Thailand, it was pork burgers. I forget what it was they had in New Zealand and Australia a couple of years ago.

In Amsterdam it was a beef sriracha burger. Except it wasn’t, as they were out of them at the McDonald’s we visited. Instead, I got a chili chicken sandwich as that was still something a little different, as well as a strawberry meringue McFlurry.

Day 3

Day 3 started with breakfast in the hotel’s Executive Lounge again. For a hotel lounge breakfast, they had a pretty good selection – I can’t really complain about bacon, sausage and smoked salmon alongside a glass of Prosecco in the morning 🙂

Day 3 had been our lucky day as we’d managed to get tickets that morning for the Anne Frank House. That was no mean feat as tickets are extremely hard to come by – check out this post explaining how to get tickets for the Anne Frank House.

The Anne Frank House was a 25 minute walk to and from our hotel which was a great opportunity to see more of the city. Amsterdam has loads of canals running through it which makes the city incredibly picturesque.

There was a surprising number of floating homes on the canals there.

Something else you’ll see a ton of in Amsterdam is bikes. There are dedicated cycle lanes throughout the city and we saw more bikes during our four days there than we did cars.

One of the benefits of so many Dutch people using bikes instead of cars is that they don’t need to dedicate so much space to parking lots. Instead, you’ll find large bike lots (like in the photo) below all over the city. Amsterdam even has a multi-story bike lot which our friends showed us a photo of from their trip, but we didn’t get around to looking for it ourselves.

We also saw quite a few people riding what looked to be a cross between a bike and a wheelbarrow. I suspect the large basket on the front is normally used for things like groceries, but we also saw kids riding in them.

Once we arrived back at the hotel, we went up to the SkyLounge for a quick drink. We’d gone at night time the previous day and stayed inside, so we wanted to check out the outdoor rooftop seating area.

Like I mentioned at the start of the post, Amsterdam is unlike New York in that it’s a very short city due to the lack of skyscrapers. That means being on the 11th floor puts you above most of the city.

That evening we decided to head over to the Red Light District, although not for that reason. Along the way we saw Oude Kerk which is not only Amsterdam’s oldest parish church but also the city’s oldest building.

While Shae took a couple of photos, I noticed a strong smell of pee. This was unusual as Amsterdam is a pretty clean city and we weren’t anywhere near a restroom. We were also out in the open, so it wasn’t somewhere people would be likely to publicly urinate.

Or so I thought.

Turning around, I noticed what turned out to be a very public restroom. It was a metal structure that curved around so guys could relieve themselves with an element of privacy. On the one hand, it’s a genius idea as it doesn’t require any plumbing – you just erect the metal container and people are quite literally good to go.

On the other hand, it’s just plain weird.

The reason we’d gone to the Red Light District was to check out Red Light Secrets – a museum of prostitution.

Both Shae and I thought that it had the potential to be really interesting but it was a bust (ba-dum-tish!) We’d gone in expecting to learn more about the history of prostitution in Amsterdam, the life of sex workers, etc., but the museum was fairly light on information.

There were a few interesting things we learned, but we both walked out disappointed in the experience. We’d therefore recommend giving it a miss unless you want to practice your red light technique…

It was almost 9 pm by this stage and we’d not had dinner, so we returned to Little Saigon for dinner and got exactly the same things we’d ordered on our previous visit as it had been so tasty.

Being out that late meant we also got to enjoy Amsterdam at night. It’s a beautiful city no matter what time of day you’re out and about.

Day 4

Day 4 was a bigger bust than the museum of prostitution had been the night before. We were due to check out of the DoubleTree and were staying overnight at a hotel by the airport as our flight home was fairly early the next morning.

During the day though, we’d planned to leave our bags at the hotel and use their free bikes.

Those plans were dashed in the early hours of the morning though. I’d apparently eaten something that hadn’t agreed with me, so biking didn’t sound appealing. The hotel was also fully booked, so we weren’t able to get a late checkout.

As a result, we decided to head straight to the airport hotel and relax there. As I mentioned earlier, the city is only a 15 minute train ride from the airport, so we figured we could always head back into Amsterdam later that day if I was feeling any better. (Sadly, I didn’t.)

Shae and I arrived at the airport just after our hotel’s shuttle bus had left. It would be another 40 minutes before it returned, so we decided to take a taxi there instead.

The downside is that it cost us €30 ($34) to get to the hotel rather than it being free. On the positive side, our taxi was a Tesla and this was our first time ever riding in one 🙂

We stayed at the Renaissance Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and got a suite (and sweet) upgrade thanks to my Platinum status. They gave us a 700 sq ft one bedroom suite with a whirlpool tub which was awesome.

Final Thoughts

So that was our four days in Amsterdam. Although the final day was wasted because I didn’t feel well, we still had a great time there.

Amsterdam is now one of our favorite cities, so we’d highly recommend visiting. There’s still so much we didn’t get to see, so we’re hoping to return at some point in the future.