Amsterdam: Get IJ'ed

We had a week in Amsterdam at the end of our trip, mostly due to the timing of the cheaper flights that we found. We found it was a nice relaxing way to end our trip since we could take our time seeing the sights in Amsterdam.

July 26 - Fly from Dublin

We arrived in the evening on July 26th giving us just enough time to get settled and visit a nearby restaurant for dinner. We took the bikes the hosts had for us to use to dinner and were surprised with a rainstorm while we were finishing our food. Luckily, it wasn't too far to get back home, so we didn't get too wet. We were really excited about our accommodations for Amsterdam since we were staying in a cute little trailer which they called the "Circus Wagon" in our hosts backyard. We also had the pleasure of waking up to sheep, cow, horse, and all sorts of interesting animal noises since there was a large field right behind us.

The Circus Wagon

Our cow neighbors

July 27 - Dam Square

We got a slow start our first morning and biked down to the docks to they free ferry we could take over to the city. Since we had such a late start, we skipped breakfast and grabbed lunch at the cafe by the dock. Then we ferried over with our bikes and biked into the middle of the city to Dam Square. This was the main square in the middle of town where the Royal Palace and Madame Tussaud's are (obviously the most important buildings in town...). We were overwhelmed by the number of people and couldn't find anywhere to park our bikes (where are the bike racks, Amsterdam?!), so we moved on to try to find somewhere less busy to hang out. We biked down the road a bit and found another smaller square where we could park and walk around. We walked along the nearby canal and found a nice bar to have a drink with a canal view. We stopped in at the Cheese Museum on our walk over, but just checked out the merch in the shop before continuing on. We cut the day pretty short since we knew we needed to go grocery shopping to make sure we had enough food for the week (and save some money by eating in for as many meals as we could).

Dam Square

Our canal view for afternoon drinks

July 28 - Brewery in a Windmill!

Before visiting the windmill brewery, Brouwerij 't IJ, we killed some time by attempting to visit the botanical gardens before being too cheap to actually pay to enter, then by checking out a few other parks nearby. The windmill brewery was obviously something we had to check out since, you can probably tell, our trip is essentially beer themed, so we planned to head over there right when they opened at 2. It sounded like they got pretty busy, so we were hoping we'd miss the crowds by going early, but apparently that's what everyone else thinks since we arrived and found a large crowd of people waiting for the doors to be opened. But there was plenty of room, so we were able to sample a few of their beers before heading across the street to get some much needed lunch burritos.

After our late lunch, we biked over to the famous "I Amsterdam" sign, and took a couple photos before wandering around the area a bit. We grabbed an afternoon coffee before heading back to the ferry to go home for dinner.

July 29 - Katten Kabinet

Our plan for Saturday was to visit the Katten Kabinet. There are tons of museums in Amsterdam, but we had done plenty of museuming at this point in our trip, so we decided to check out one of the more unique museums in town. This museum was entirely focused on art with cats as the main inspiration. There were several rooms of one of the old houses in town converted to art gallery space covered with paintings, photos, old advertisements, etc. all about cats. There was even a back garden with some big posters and some resident cats that wandered through occasionally.

After the museum, we wanted to find a nice rooftop bar to grab a drink where we could get a good view of the city. We found one nearby, and headed over. We relaxed and admired the view for a while, then headed down to the bloumenmarkt, the flower market. This is a famous area in Amsterdam where you can buy flower bulbs and souvenirs of all sorts. Holland is famous for tulips, so we definitely saw lots of those!

July 30 - Heineken Experience

We were not originally planning on visiting Heineken, but decided to when we learned about a package deal we could purchase that included a canal cruise and a visit to "The Lookout", a new skyscraper across the way from Centraal Station that we were interested in visiting as well. So we purchased the package, which had us starting our day at the Heineken Experience. We did our visit, which was similarly gimmicky when compared to the visit we had a Guinness in Dublin, but overall, it entertained us for a couple hours. We finished our tour with a little time to spare before our canal cruise, so we went down the road to Bulls and Dogs to grab some hot dogs for lunch. We got back just in time to jump on the boat to ride over to "The Lookout". It was a nice relaxing ride through the city canals.

Canal Cruise

The Lookout is famous for "Europe's highest swing" which dangles off the side of the building. We were a little tempted to try it, but opted out since it cost an extra €5. We did get to take in the good views and the strong breeze from the rooftop which was nice. When the sun came out, it was pretty comfortable lounging on the big pillow poofs they had up there as well.

July 31 - Haarlem

On Monday, we decided to take a day trip to another town to break up our Amsterdam days. We chose to visit Haarlem, which is about a 20 minute train ride just west of Amsterdam. It was nice to visit a quiet, smaller town for the day.

Our first stop was at the old church in the middle of town, the Cathedral of St. Bavo. We walked around a little market in the square in front of the church before going inside. It was very large and very well maintained. It was originally a Catholic church, but reformed to Protestantism.

Our next stop was a brewery that was built into another old church, Jopenkerk, for lunch. We got a couple burgers and tasted a few beers before making our way to the old windmill in town.

We made our way over to the river where we found the windmill, Molen de Adriaan. Our timing was perfect for some nice photos since it was nearly time for the nearby bridge to open up for the ships to pass. We got some nice photos with a sailboat on the river in front of the windmill before making our way over to watch the bridge open. I specifically didn't call it a draw bridge because this bridge simply swiveled at the middle to open up two channels on either side to let the boats through. Being the engineering nerds that we are, we enjoyed watching the bridge do its thing (but who doesn't like that?! :) ).

Once the bridge was back to normal, we walked across to go visit the windmill. They have tours every half hour or so, and we couldn't pass that up. We got to learn about all different kinds of windmills and see the inner workings. This mill was built for milling grain, but it is only operational for a few weeks every year since they mainly use it for educational purposes now. It was an awesome experience that I recommend to anyone with access to a windmill! When we finished the tour, we made our way, slowly along the canals, back to the train to get home.

Haarlem canal pic!

August 1&2

We had some short days for our last two since I was not feeling 100%. I ended up with a migraine on Tuesday, so we cut our day short. Tuesday, we visited St. Nicholas Basilica, saw the narrowest house in Amsterdam, and grabbed lunch before going in to rest for the remainder of the day.

Narrowest house (just the door in the middle!)

On Wednesday, we had a slow morning getting all of our things packed, making our way to the ferry, and getting lunch before ferrying over to Centraal Station. We stopped in at Little Delirium in the train station before taking the train to the airport to hang out in the lounge. We fly to Iceland for an overnight layover before making it back to Michigan!