We had booked a few days in Amsterdam coinciding with Kathryn’s birthday.
One element of this trip which was fabulous was the short flight times from Norwich. 45 minutes there and 30 minutes back!
Despite the short flight times, a small bottle of water and a snack are handed out on each flight.
We arrived at Schipol airport and felt sad to be directed into the massive queue for “non-Europeans”.
Without starting a political rage about Brexit, I wonder how many folks who voted for it are really satisfied with the alleged benefits? From where I’m standing, it’s led to us being worse off.
Do your research folks and try not to believe everything your favourite politicians tell you!
Right, now where were we? 😳
Day 1 – Anne Frank House
As we arrived before hotel check-in, we dropped our bags off at our hotel and went for a wander.
We stopped at a really nice café (Melly’s) for a coffee, a shared toastie, and cake.
We then walked to the Anne Frank museum to find we were hour and half too early as we hadn’t realised our watches had changed to local time! (Netherlands is 1 hour ahead of UK).
Another wander around and another café stop for a cup of tea and a cold drink and we were enjoying chilling so much we realised we were now at risk of missing our booked museum time!
We walked at pace to find we’d just missed our slot by 2-3 minutes!
We asked one of the staff if we could join the next one and although that was not possible we could join the one after, about half an hour later.
We sat on a nearby bench and waited then joined the queue for pre-paid tours and we were in.
Anne Frank
In case you don’t know, Anne Frank was a Jewish child during the Second World War who hid with her sister Margot and other family members in the annexe of a house for almost two years before being discovered by the Germans in 1944.
After capture, they were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp. Anne and Margot were later transported to Bergen-Belsen but sadly both died of typhus shortly before the end of the war.
Their father Otto survived and writes heartbreaking text about the sadness of losing his family in the war.
What made Anne famous was that she maintained diaries while they were in hiding which gives us all insights into their lives during this time, as well as Anne’s hopes for the future where she held ambitions to be a journalist and writer.
It’s a sad story of hopes and ambitions cut short by the brutality of the Nazi regime but fascinating to learn how the family hid for so long and how they lived constantly worried about being discovered.
Many years ago, we were on holiday with the kids in the Netherlands and had a day trip to Amsterdam but could not get into the Anne Frank house as we hadn’t realised you need to book in advance. It was good to get tickets and visit this time round.
The Tour
There was a introductory talk summarising the story of Anne Frank then we joined the rest of the visitors to tour round the house.
Photos are not permitted inside but it did not detract from the enjoyment.
I would thoroughly recommend the audio tour guide which you tap on numbers (which are mainly on the entrances to the rooms) to be read a summary of the story of what you’re looking at.
You walk round various levels of the house and down stairs and look at each area as it has been preserved with photos, stories, and artefacts.
It is a really interesting place and highly recommended. If you haven’t been before, make sure your book your tickets well in advance.
We left the house and had a wander round and decided to have a snack for supper so we had some Dutch chips for tea.
Quite famous here is a paper cone of double-fried chips with a sauce of your choosing, most commonly mayonnaise.
I chose BBQ sauce but found the chips to be average and there to be too much sauce. Gotta try these things though.
It was back to the hotel now for a chill and to plan the next day.
Day 2 – Rijks Museum
We were off to the famous Rijks museum so enjoyed a fabulous breakfast at our hotel then hopped on a tram.
The museum’s website (linked above) cites the following as the main attractions:
The iconic Rijksmuseum in the heart of Amsterdam is one of the things you need to see when you visit the Netherlands. Rijksmuseum moves you through more than 8,000 works of Dutch art and history including masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh.
We really enjoyed this museum and looking around the artwork while listening to the stories of the artists and their vision when they were creating the paintings.
Below is a group of my favourite paintings.
One painting I particularly enjoyed had a photography story to it. That was The Singel Bridge at the Paleisstraat in Amsterdam by George Hendrik Brietner.
Brietner was a street photographer and impressionist painter using the early handheld cameras to take photographs to use as references for his paintings.
If you look at the painting above, you’ll notice the woman is blurry, which represents the movement and a representation of what Brietner captured in the photograph.
He could’ve painted the woman in focus but chose to keep to the image of her out of focus, giving the viewer a visual guide to see her, but to enable you to quickly look past the woman and to the other areas of interest in the painting.
There’s more to this story… Brietner originally painted the woman in the foreground as a maid but after complaints by the gallery representing him repainted the woman as an elegant lady.
As we left the galleries, we called in at the famous Cuypers library which is the oldest and largest library in the Netherlands.
After a peek at the library, we went downstairs to the lobby area.
We wandered along the lobbies on our way to the museum shop and I noticed some interesting things on the ceiling that looked like they had potential photographically.
There was a cage-like structure hanging from the ceiling so I took a few images including attempting some ICM shots.
Below is a montage of my favourite ICM shot in colour, mono, and a blue/silver filter courtesy of Nik Silver Efex.
This structure gave a lot of opportunity to capture some interesting shapes.
As we moved from one lobby to the next and closer towards the shop, there were some light shades dangling down from the ceiling.
This looked like a perfect opportunity for some multi-exposure shots.
We left the museum and found a really nice Italian restaurant for supper on Kathryn’s birthday.
As we arrived back at our hotel, we decided to have a G&T in a bar which is adjacent to the hotel.
We had a really nice day and a special one for Kathryn’s birthday.
Day 3 – Jordaan District
The weather was terrible with consistent rain showers so we had a restful morning and once the rain had died down, we went out in the afternoon exploring
We were heading to the Jordaan area where Kathryn had her sights set on a visit to a knitting shop where she had knitted (and indeed was wearing) a multi-coloured scarf/shawl that the owner had designed.
This gave me a free pass to wander around on my own and do a bit of street photography – below is a montage of some of my captures.
One of my favourite captures of the day was a shot of a tree growing right out front of a doorway.
As I walked back to see if Kathryn had geeked out enough on wool, I had a long peek in the window of a camera shop nearby.
I must’ve timed it right as when I got to the knitting shop, Kathryn was at the till. 😂
We wandered up the street and bought some Oliebollen: Deep-fried dough balls, similar to donuts (these ones had raisins in them), traditionally eaten around New Year’s, which were very moreish. We must’ve eaten these quickly as I have no photo of them! 😳
We wandered around continuing to explore and the decided to hop on a tram back and go to a restaurant opposite our hotel.
This was a Japanese restaurant and we had a really nice meal there.
Our third day was done and we decided that we would get up early tomorrow and head out to enjoy the early morning sunrise / golden hour light.
Day 4 – Early morning in Amsterdam
We got up and went to breakfast at 0700 so that we could get out and about with nice morning sunlight.
We knew it would be quieter too so it gave us an opportunity to see some sights.
We stopped at Rembrandts Plain, where there is a memorial for the great artist.
We then wandered around and located a really good area known as seven bridges, for obvious reasons.
The particular one we stopped at was a canal bridge where, if I knelt down I could get a shot almost seeing through the tunnel under the bridge.
I took several shots here trying to time it such that a cyclist was moving across the bridge.
I’m reasonably pleased with this shot but it’s had a lot of post-production editing removing distractions from the streets either side, and I appear to have no sky detail at all. It’s not blown out, it’s just that it was a plain bright sky.
We stopped for a coffee then walked up to the flower market.
This wasn’t as impressive as the Amsterdam guides had suggested.
We then hopped on a tram back to the area near the hotel and walked over the road to where there were several canal boat tours.
I had seen a photograph here in one of the YouTube Amsterdam guides featuring reflections of houses so had to stop and give it a try.
We wandered around to find and pick a boat tour.
We paid €14 each and enjoyed an awesome boat tour of Amsterdam.
I have no photos from the tour as we were under a Perspex roof and I just wanted to enjoy the ride and concentrate on our tour guides commentary.
After the tour, we went back to our hotel to chill and then we went out for dinner in the evening to the same Italian restaurant we had visited before.
Day 5 – Last Day – Van Gogh Museum
Our last day had arrived so we had breakfast, checked out and secured our bags as we had tickets for the Van Gogh museum.
We hopped on the tram and off we went.
We really enjoyed the Van Gogh museum, once again the audio tour highly recommended and the artwork is superb.
The great man himself is shown below.
A wider collection of images below.
We left the museum, picked up our bags from the hotel and headed to the train which would take us to Schipol airport for our flight back.
One amusing thing as we did our pre-flight check in online was that KLM offered us what they described as ‘Fine Dining’ for £50 on the flight back. For a 30 minute flight where it appears they staff are doing well to hand out a bag of cheddars and a small bottle of water just in time for landing, we weren’t quite sure what fine dining would entail.
Post-trip thoughts
We both really enjoyed Amsterdam – it’s a vibrant city with lots to see and do and the trams are great.
The museums we visited were all excellent and the experience is so much better with an audio guide.
There are so many quaint canals, bridges and boats which make for nice images.
Bicycles are the natives transport of choice as we know, and you need to careful when crossing roads because often you turn your head left and right to find suddenly a cyclist is up close and personal.
I had some issues during our stay with occasionally the Hays travel card asking for the PIN when tapping in on the tram. I got round it by using my phone or bank card. However, on this day, and our final tram ride, I couldn’t tap out properly and left without doing so.
A nervous few days back home as I wasn’t sure if I would face a penalty fine but all I see is a €4 charge so I think imprisonment has been avoided for now!
This trip has reignited our lost and forgotten enjoyment of European city breaks and we shall be less hesitant to do so next time.
Onwards and upwards…