My friends who have visited Amsterdam within the last few years strongly recommended using a guide/docent for visiting the Amsterdam Museums. What do y'all think? And any recommendations and/or personal testimonies? Thanks- Jim
I've visited a number of the museums in Amsterdam and found that using either the information in a guide book or in some cases audio guides available at the museum have been adequate to understand what I'm looking at or which paintings are most important to see. This includes the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam that is often overlooked - it was very interesting and informative.
We used the audioguides provided by the museums at the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. We were happy with both. Not being very art savvy, the audioguides really help me. Didn’t do any tours with live guides so I can’t compare.
We were on the Rick Steves tour in April when we visited the Rijksmuseum, and we had a wonderfully informative guide. I really enjoyed that. You could spend all day there, so it's nice to have someone who can offer highlights; and then you would be free to explore more on your own. I think it made all the difference.
We had an audio guide at the Dutch Resistance museum, but found that reading was just as quick and easy as listening to the audio guide.