A few months ago, I decided I wanted to celebrate my 40th birthday with a trip to Amsterdam. A few days later, my favorite band, Yellowcard, announced they were doing a European tour and would be playing in Utrecht, 30 minutes away from Amsterdam. The concert was a few weeks after my birthday so I decided I could wait a couple weeks to turn 40 and celebrate at the concert.
I had never been to Amsterdam so I originally intended to stay there for the whole trip, but then I kept seeing Utrecht all over Instagram and so many people saying how cool of a place it was so we decided to split the trip between the 2 cities. We also invited some friends to come along. They had been to Amsterdam many times, but never Utrecht, so they were also excited to check it out too.
Amsterdam
We flew in to Amsterdam and spent our first 2 nights at Hotel NewKit (Find it on Expedia). It was a comfortable and clean place. The decor was very modern and nice. The room was pretty small compared to other hotel rooms, however that seemed to be the norm for all the hotels I was looking at. It was located near a train station and bus stops, however there wasn’t a ton in the general area of the hotel so we did end up taking a couple Ubers to get to other places. It was a bit far from the city center. But it was nice and there wasn’t a lot of noise at night, whereas if we had stayed closer to the city center it may have been a lot louder. The hotel offered a daily breakfast for an additional charge. We didn’t get it because there are rarely gluten free options but to be fair, I didn’t look at it to check. The front desk staff was very nice. They also offer bikes that you can rent. Had it not been raining our entire trip, we would have rented some to go to the Street Art Museum area. I really wanted to do that but the rain crushed that plan.
We didn’t really do anything specific or hit any of the major tourist attractions because we had such a limited time there. We went to a few different areas to explore though. On our first day, after checking in, we headed to the De Pijp area and attempted to get a gluten free croissant. I saw a few Youtube videos that claimed that these were amazing croissants, and after trying every single gluten free croissant in Paris and being disappointed in all of them, I was excited to try it. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, they had sold out for the day and they were going to be closed the rest of the time we were there. I was super bummed. We wandered around the area for a bit though and checked out a street market.
From De Pijp we went towards the city center and canal area and met up with my high school friend. We went to some bars, had a delicious dinner, and walked around, exploring a bunch of the random souvenir shops and admiring all the sights and lights. There were so many cool shops, one of the best was a Rubber Ducky store!
The next day we grabbed some breakfast and then caught the tram to the Westerpark neighborhood. We aren’t great at public transportation, since it’s still a relatively new thing for us, so that was a little bit complicated. We didn’t know you had to push the stop button so we went a few stops past where we wanted to go. Later that day, we didn’t know you had to put your hand up for the bus to stop so it pulled up and then promptly drove away from us, even though we were standing at the curb and it was raining and freezing cold, so that was fun. So anyways, in Westerpark we explored the park and hung out at a bar arcade place for a while where we had a very intense Jenga game.
From Westerpark we went to another part of Central Amsterdam, near Central Station to go to Popeyes CoffeeShop, which was the only coffeeshop that had gluten free treats. We met up with our cousin there and hit up a few more stores as we made our way to meet our other friends who had just arrived. We spent the evening in Central Amsterdam, getting dinner and hitting different bars.
If I go back to Amsterdam I would love to go to some museums and The Anne Frank House. But unfortunately there just wasn’t time for that. We did have a good time though with what we did do there.
The next morning, we had a nice breakfast with our friends and caught the intercity train to Utrecht. Stay tuned for part 2 of my Netherlands trip to read about Utrecht. Spoiler, I think I passed out and ended up in a Hallmark movie.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to follow along on my Instagram @vegas.to.portugal to see more of my Amsterdam adventures and my life as an expat in Portugal. 💙
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