Can You Stand Another Amsterdam Trip Report?

Bikes can be rented to ride on the roads around Keukenhof to see the tulip fields. It was important to Chuck to do this. This was my first bike ride in about 30 years, and I was a bit nervous about it, especially after some guy fell over on his rented bike into a motorcycle at an intersection. But… whadya know… you really can just hop on a bike and the muscle memory from childhood and adolescence is still there. The young adult happened to call from the US while I was stopped to look at tulip fields. “What are you doing, Dave?” “I’m riding a bike and looking at tulip fields.” Long pause. “I didn’t know Dave could ride a bike.”

- Leiden & The Hague

Leiden was the home of the Pilgrims before they came to the New World. We arrived at Leiden just before 8 am and headed to the TI (opens at 8) to buy the Pilgrim Walking Route booklet for €6,95. We walked the route, which also included more general sites related to Leiden, too. For example, what Dutch artist was a boy running around Leiden at the time the Pilgrims were pilgriming there? Little Remy! There are a good number of Rembrandt sights in Leiden – so many, that the TI also offers a Rembrandt Walking Route booklet (along with booklets with other walking themes).

After our self-guided walking tour, we visited the weekly Wednesday market, full of produce, meat, and other goods. Next, we hit the De Valk Windmill Museum, set within a tower mill dating back to 1743; we watched a video, explored exhibitions, and climbed to the top of the windmill. I liked the museum quite a bit and learned more about windmills here than at Kinderdijk, to be honest. We had a quick lunch at Cafe Pieter at Pieterskerk, and we then did a 1-hour tour at the Pilgrim Museum, which includes a room set up in the style of a typical one-room Pilgrim home in 17th century Leiden including a 17th century wooden baby walker with wheels. This was another very good activity. Leiden is quite gorgeous and quite clean. I can easily see why people on this forum recommend it as an alternative base for visiting Amsterdam/the Netherlands.

The Hague is a short 10-minute train ride from Leiden, so we headed there mid-afternoon for the purpose of visiting the Mauritshuis and viewing its Vermeer paintings (among other things). The Girl with a Pearl Earring is indeed something special. My favorite masterpiece of the trip! After dinner, it was back to Amsterdam.

- Rotterdam & Kinderdijk

We had another early start on the day we headed to Rotterdam, where we would catch the Waterbus to Kinderdijk. We arrived well before our Waterbus departure time so that we could take a leisurely walk from Rotterdam Centraal to the dock. The ferry ride was pleasant enough; the ferry passes Johan’s Ark, an exact replica of Noah’s ark with a giraffe standing at its bow; it was built by a guy named Johan; apparently, it’s up for sale if you are in the market for an ark.

Kinderdijk has also been mentioned quite a bit on this forum. To review, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site that has 19 windmills built between 1738 and 1740. Two of them are museums that may be entered. There is a film that introduces the site near the entrance. It’s definitely a visual learner film – big on animation, light on info, which is required of a film whose target audience is people of all languages. The film at De Falk in Leiden had so much more info, but only in Dutch or English and delivered in a much less engaging manner. Walking among the windmills and the boat ride are nice activities, though the boat ride definitely was not a “must do.”

We returned to Rotterdam via the Waterbus. Once back in Rotterdam, we took public transportation to Delfshaven, a borough of Rotterdam that “survived Germany’s 1940 bombing of the city” and has “a well-preserved 17th-century canal-side architecture” (credit to Wikipedia). And it has… Pilgrim history! The Pilgrim Fathers Church stands along a canal at the site where the Pilgrims boarded that famous ship… the Speedwell… which was supposed to meet up with the Mayflower in England and sail to the New World with the Mayflower… but it repeatedly sprang leaks and had to be left behind in England. One of the things I LOVE to do when I travel? Stand where history happened. It was very cool to stand where the Pilgrims embarked a ship for their journey to the New World.

The Houses

Corrie Ten Boom House tour. Great. Awesome. Wonderful. Highlight of the trip. The Ten Boom family saved over 800 people during WWII, including Jewish people and members of the Dutch Resistance. Corrie, her father Casper, and her sister Betsy are among Yad Vashem’s “Righteous Among the Nations.” Get those tickets at least 4-6 months in advance; you can get them up to a year in advance now.

Anne Frank House. We could only get tickets to walk through the house with the audio guide; a website malfunction during the brief moment when tickets for the visit + talk became available knocked us out of that (though I had done the talk about a decade ago). Both Chuck and I had re-read The Diary of Anne Frank before the trip. A poignant stop.

Storytime

Dave is an obsessive planner. For our visit to Haarlem to see the Corrie Ten Boom House, I found a handful of Jewish sites to visit before the 10 am tour. I entered them on the itinerary during the planning stage. But I failed to save the itinerary. So I had to research them again.

On the day of our Haarlem visit, Chuck and I started our journey early so we could see these sights. On the train, though, we met a fellow traveler from the US who was making her first international trip at the age of 75 or 80; the widow of 5 years told us she had no one with whom to travel because her sister lived paycheck to paycheck. She had done a cruise in Norway to explore her Norwegian roots and was now spending a couple of days in Amsterdam because she wanted to see the Corrie Ten Boom House. She had missed the window to get a ticket for an inside tour, but she had found a walking tour about WWII and the Ten Boom family. When we got off the train, she had trouble figuring out the tap to pay system to exit the platform, and it soon became clear she had no idea how to get to the meeting point for her tour. We tried to show her how to use Google Maps (which she had on her phone and had used for driving in the past), but it was also clear this strategy was not going to get her to the meeting spot.

So… Dave said, “How about we walk you there?” As we walked, she told us how important Corrie Ten Boom was to her. I of course offered her my ticket for the inside tour of the house because I will almost definitely return to Haarlem to visit my friends who live there. She declined the offer multiple times. As we continued our walk, she also told us that she had prayed that God would send her someone to get her to the meeting point of her tour. She knew she didn’t have the skill set to get to herself there but had hopped on the train in Amsterdam, trusting in God’s provision for assistance. For anyone who has read any of Corrie Ten Boom’s books, that was a very Corrie Ten Boom thing to do.

We got the lady to her meeting point with only enough time to double time it to the Corrie Ten Boom House for our tour. There was no time for the well-researched Jewish sites. I would argue though, that the ultimate purpose of the few hours put into researching Jewish sites in Haarlem a few months prior to the trip was not so much preparation for seeing Jewish sites but was preparation for being on an early train so that we could be the answer to the prayer of a full-of-faith solo senior traveler. Sights are cool; people are cooler.

The Art Museums

Van Gogh Museum. We jumped in the line outside the museum at about 8:45 am for our 9:00 opening time tickets. We used the audio guide, which I thought was quite good. The museum was very busy. I found it interesting that Van Gogh was a lay pastor in a mine for a few months in his early 20’s. It was also interesting that the unfortunate ear was wrapped in a newspaper and given to a prostitute, prompting a call to the local authorities.

Mauritshuis. The museum has a nice collection. We used the museum’s app to negotiate the museum and to learn about its art; this worked out well.

Rijksmuseum. It’s pretty cool that The Nightwatchman is still on display as it undergoes restoration. We used a Context Travel guide for a 2.5-hour tour. It was good. But expensive. I wish I had noticed the €7,50 guided tours offered by the museum on its website. That would have been much more economical. As a side note, the guide had been to a play the previous night about life in the Netherlands during an invasion of the country by a Trump-led USA. She expressed genuine concern about that possibility.

Dutch Resistance Museum. An excellent museum that chronicles the people and activities of the Dutch resistance but, more broadly, also does a great job telling the story of the Dutch experience of WWII. It is well worth a stop.

The Performances

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra #1. A matinee. The Concertgebouw is a grand place to see a performance. I was particularly impressed by the wrought-iron banisters for the stairs that ascend to the balcony that have Cupid-like creatures playing musical instruments embedded in them. The performance was a bit of a “must” for me coming off my trip to Czechia last fall. It included pieces by the Czech composers Smetana and Dvořák, along with a new piece by a Dutch composer. Excellent.

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra #2. This was a 9 pm performance in the “Essentials” series. As best as I can tell, the series seems to be kind of like “Intro to Orchestral Music” aimed at young adults with an entertaining, multimedia pre-performance talk in Dutch that concluded with an interview with the conductor in English, including the question, “Is the conductor or the pianist in charge during a piano concerto?” The single piece performed at the event was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5, “Emperor.” Another excellent performance.

The Miscellany

De Gooyer Windmill. Chuck was dying to see a windmill on our arrival day, so we caught an Uber from the hotel to the east side of Amsterdam to see this one. It dates to 1725 and has been at its current site atop its current stone base since 1814. It’s cool.

Canal Cruise. Bow’s Journeys receives high praise on the Forum. This was by far the least favorite activity of the trip for Chuck and me. We did not get young, amiable Captain Jack; we got Captain Fokko who spent rather extended amounts of time discussing the Red Light District, drug use, and alcohol. He painted a far more cliched picture of Amsterdam than the large-group canal ride I took a decade ago that presented a much more textured view of the city. In fairness, our impression was likely impacted by the juxtaposition of our daytime house visits where we reflected on Holocaust tragedy and principled acts of bravery worthy of Yad Vashem recognition against a canal tour that was primarily about self-indulgence.

The Restaurants

Al Dente Pasta Lab. This 6-8 table restaurant (and Italian grocery) serves wonderful homemade pasta with homemade sauces. It’s owned by a husband-wife team from Rome. I had rigatoni with eggplant and tomato sauce, topped with grated ricotta cheese. Spectacular. And who knew ricotta exists in a grateable form? My favorite photo of the trip was here -- Chuck and I relaxing with a post-meal Americano at a table in front of a huge store-front window that looks out on the De Gooyer windmill and about 30 bikes parked on the other side of the window. A very Dutch photo.

Takumi Tonkotsu Rivierenbuurt. After the first Concertgebouw performance, we met up with “the young adult’s” cousin and her husband who live in the area. They chose the restaurant, a ramen shop they like that happens to be part of a European chain. It was along the path from the Concertgebouw back to the hotel. It was a very nice meal with great company. Once again, sights are cool; people are cooler.

Restaurant Heemelrijck (De Pjip). This ended up being our Dutch dining experience. The usual RS recommendations like The Pantry were all booked up 2-3 weeks prior to our trip. The dining room here has dark paneling and a big model ship on one of the walls. It felt very Dutch, but there were definitely tourists there. The restaurant was very busy, but our server Rafy was great – friendly, hard-working, good energy. We had a proper Stamppot and the establishment’s very own Flipping [female dog] for dessert… think French toast with cinnamon ice cream and sugar on top. We both enjoyed our meal here. We stopped in another day for lunch because Chuck wanted to try the pea soup he had seen on the dinner menu. Sadly, it was not on the lunch menu, but I’ve learned to ask for something I want even if I expect a “no” because “the worst they can do is say ‘no.’” They said yes. It took a long time to get it with only a few people in the restaurant for lunch, so they apparently made it fresh for us instead of just microwaving it.

-Fa. H. Wegewijs. A hole-in-the-wall bread, cheese, and sandwich shop just inside the Jordaan near the Anne Frank House. I found a recommendation for it from a local who said, “It’s where the locals go!” The shop offers warm and cold sandwiches, but one can also get a small cheese platter with samples of a variety of cheeses. This was our Amsterdam cheese tasting, and we also got a sandwich. The guy at the counter told us what each cheese was and instructed us in the order to eat them. No seating inside – there was a table with 4 seats out front that we shared with a couple of young Dutch women.

The Seafood Bar (Damrak). Fresh seafood prepared well and served in a very large, very atmospheric, very loud dining room.

Balkan Grill (The Hague). This dark restaurant in an old automobile garage provides quite good Balkan food. Friendly service. We enjoyed our meal here quite a bit.

Omahe Indonesische Brasserie. Indonesian restaurant without rijsttafel. The ginger lime “house made refreshment” was indeed rather refreshing. The menu “reimagines beloved classics with a modern touch… every dish honors its roots while embracing something new.” Food was great, including dessert. The dadar gulung kelapa, green pandan crepes rolled with sweet coconut and palm sugar (“Indonesia’s all-time favorite dessert”) was one of the most unique desserts I have had.

D&A Humus Bistro (Zuid). Israeli/Middle Eastern food in a hip but reasonably small restaurant. We had the tasting menu, and it was excellent. The fresh ginger lemonade was lovely.

Conclusion

Chuck and I enjoyed our time in Amsterdam. Nearly every activity was much enjoyed, and we had fun eating a variety of foods. The tulips were gorgeous and more than justified our April trip. Next up for Dave? A trip to North Dakota in August with Chuck to visit the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (opens July 4) and then a solo trip to Brno and Olomouc, Czechia, in October for Janáček Brno 2026, a festival celebrating the work of composer Leoš Janáček.