The Netherlands: From Bustling Capital to Quaint Towns!

What a pretty, diverse, interesting country! Mackenzie and I spent three full days in the Netherlands, which started and ended with a long train through Germany. While in the Netherlands, we spent a day and a half in the beautiful and popular capital of Amsterdam, a half-day in the quaint town of Zaanse Schans, and a day split between a couple medium-sized Dutch cities (Amersfoort and Utrecht). While Mackenzie and I both went into this trip with medium expectations, we both came out loving the country and especially Amsterdam!

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The journey started early Wednesday morning, when Mackenzie and I left Copenhagen for a long train trip to Amsterdam, where we arrived around 7:00 PM that night. We dropped off our bags at our Airbnb in Koog aan de Zaan, a small town just outside of Amsterdam, before taking the local train into the capital city.

Amsterdam Centraal Station -- one of the prettiest in Europe so far!

Our first stop was of utmost importance (and one that we frequented throughout the trip): Mannekin Pis. Named after the popular Belgian sculpture, this small joint served up the best fries in the Netherlands. After taking our time eating the delicious fried goodness, we spent a couple hours wandering around the center of the city, getting acquainted with the many canals, Dam Square, and the winding back alleys. We ended the evening by stopping in a popular local bar for a bit before heading back to Koog aan de Zaan.

We were hungry so went with a Large at Mannekin Pis --

didn't expect it to be half the size of Mack!

Directly next to the train station, our Airbnb provided quick access to Amsterdam Centraal, and after a quick breakfast in the Airbnb (which held true to both the bed and breakfast parts of its title), we scooted back into the center for our full day of exploring the capital city. The day began with a lot of walking, as we criss-crossed between the different landmarks and over many canal bridges, commonly taking stops for pictures as we went. We made stops at St. Nicholas Church, a local china-selling store that occupied an old Bell tower (where we bought a small mini windmill ornament), the long and famous Amsterdam Flower Market, cheese shops galore (with plenty of free samples, to my delight), and finally ending at the Rijksmuseum. We didn’t enter the museum, but instead walked around the accompanying green space and listened to some fantastic orchestral street performers.

One of Amsterdam's many canals; the countless bikes 

made us feel like we were back in Copenhagen.

From the Rijksmuseum we took a U-turn and headed back in the direction of the train station to meet up with our Free Walking Tour, which met at 1:30. The tour, of course, was filled with more walking, and through it we were able to hit a lot of the historical and cultural spots that we had missed during our own expeditions. The tour ended up being nearly 3 hours, so there were more stops and fun facts than we can count, but some of the favorites were:

• The Old City Entrance Gate, now quite centrally located, which used to be filled with aspiring doctors and painters alike, practicing in the different towers. Rembrandt himself painted his popular The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp here while observing a room of doctors.
• The all-women community in the middle of Amsterdam, where only single women (mostly widows) have lived for centuries. The community also housed one of the old hidden Catholic Churches from a time when Protestantism had monopolistic theological rule over the Netherlands and outlawed Catholicism. From the outside the Church looked like any normal apartment, but the inside was vast and opulent!
• The controversial Red Light District, where the guide spoke to the long-lasting tolerance of Amsterdam, starting in the 1500’s with its revolutionary religious tolerance and extending to modern day, with its legal prostitution and pseudo-legal marijuana. While neither Mackenzie nor I were fans of the Red Light District, it was fascinating to hear about Amsterdam’s history of tolerance and the positives and negatives it has brought to the city.

Exterior of hidden Catholic Church. Looks normal on the outside...

but walk inside and this is the sight you're greeted with!

After the city tour, Mackenzie and I had to get off our very tired feet, and found a canal-side café where we could sit and relax for a bit. From there we meandered our way back to the Rijksmuseum, where we laid out on the long lawn. Mackenzie took a nap and I people watched, and after our much-needed rest, we headed back across town towards the train station. Of course, on the way, we had to take a stpop at Mannekin Pis, where we got fries #2 of the trip. We finished the day by taking the local train back to Koog aan de Zaan and calling it an early night.

Long grassy lawn leading up to the Rijksmuseum

We awoke on Friday, had our breakfast, and, rather than taking the train into Amsterdam, we hopped on a train going the opposite direction for a half-day trip to Zaanse Schans

Residential house in quaint town of Zaanse Schans.

We arrived at the train station, walked about 15 minutes to get to our destination, and were greeted by a fantastic surprise: the cutest, most quaint, stereotypically-Dutch village imaginable. We headed to Zaanse Schans because we read it was the place to go to see the best of the Netherlands’ windmills, but Zaans Schans was so much more! We wandered through the tiny village, over the mini canals, amongst the lambs and chickens of the locals’ backyard, and up to the windmills. Most of the windmills were still fully functioning, and even to this day performed their original tasks (whether that be grinding peanuts into peanut oil, creating different colored dye from natural ingredients, or acting as a sawmill).

Four of Zaanse Schans' eight windmills

After surveying the eight popular windmills, we enjoyed the town and the beautiful weather some more, tested some of the “best cheese in the world” from a local producer, and headed back to the train station to now take the train all the way back into Amsterdam (only about 30 minutes).

In case Zaanse Schans wasn't already Dutch enough for you!

Less than an hour later we were back in the center of Amsterdam, and headed to one of the few areas left unexplored from the day before: Jordaan. We wandered the area, which boasts the best canals in Amsterdam, for about an hour, and ended up in line for the very popular Anne Frank Museum. It was a 2.5 hour wait (a slow day for the museum), but we were able to jump in line next to some Americans and struck up some easy conversation to pass the time, and in no time we were inside the museum.

Beautiful Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam

The museum was fascinating, and told the story of Anne Frank, the little girl we all know who hid in a secret attic during two years of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, as well as the story of her family and the other two families they hid with. Filled with tons of personal items (including Anne Frank’s original diary), the museum told a compelling story as we meandered through the very building where the family had been hiding 72 years ago. We were finished in about an hour, and headed from there back to the station and onward to our next destination: Amersfoort.

The old city entrance that puts the "foort" in Amersfoort!

A small city about 40 minutes outside of Amsterdam, we went to Amersfoort because it was both close to Utrecht and would provide us with a different perspective on the Netherlands. We arrived late enough that by the time we had walked from the train station, grabbed some things from the grocery store, and got to our Airbnb, it was about time to call it a night. We did just that, excited to explore the small city just a short walk away in the coming morning.

Sunset in Amersfoort

We woke up promptly on a drizzly Saturday and headed into the heart of Amersfoort. The city only took a couple hours to explore in entirety, and by noon we were back in our Airbnb, having seen the old drawbridge entry into the city, prominent bell tower, large outdoor marketplace (that was more like a community-wide garage sale), popular food market, a couple small churches. After a quick stay in the Airbnb, we made the walk down to the train station to catch the next train to Utrecht.

The randomness of the outdoor marketplace in Amersfoort

made it feel like more a city-wide garage sale!

Utrecht was a lot like a mini-Amsterdam. It was filled with canals, most streets were only walkable (no cars allowed), and it even had its own Manneken Pis restaurant! We spent another couple hours in Utrecht, did out usual wandering of the streets, and even dropped into a couple cool stores we saw to check out some clothes and books. After the couple hours passed and we felt we had a solid feel for Utrecht, we hopped back on our train and returned to Amersfoort. We finished the weekend with a relaxed evening and early bedtime since we had an early train back to Copenhagen to catch in the morning.

Utrecht was a genuine mini-Amsterdam!

We awoke bright and early on Sunday, gathered our things, and jumped back onto a set of trains bringing us back to Copenhagen, where we arrived in the evening – our days in the Netherlands were over!

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Amersfoort and Utrecht were both great cities and Zaanse Schans was an absolute gem, but the star of the Netherlands was surely Amsterdam for us. Even with that, though, Mackenzie and I both agree on a 90% love, 10% hate relationship with the city. We absolutely love the amazing architecture, the layout of the city, the beautiful canals, the history, and the people, but the extent of the “tolerance” in a couple areas was a little much for the two of us.

Usually, Mackenzie and I have no problem with others smoking marijuana, and we didn’t have much of a problem with it in Amsterdam either, but the near ubiquity of the smell did get annoying at times. The bigger problem for us though, was the Red Light District, which made both of us quite uncomfortable. While it was nice that the prostitution was mostly confined to one area (in this case, the Red Light District), but the presence of elementary schools in the middle of the district, in one case literally neighboring a brothel, was very odd to us.

Of course though, these things were very minor, and we left Amsterdam with it very high on our list of cities! Like I said, we love 90% of the things in Amsterdam, and our expectations were absolutely shattered! We will be very lucky if we get the chance to return.

For now, I’m actually a little late getting to writing this blog, as I had a very busy week with school once returning to Lund. Right now, it is Sunday (a week after returning from the Netherlands) and I am on a train heading from Lake Bled in Slovenia to Zagreb in Croatia. Mackenzie and I have already started our Balkan adventure and are so, so excited!! Lake Bled was fantastic already, we have Plitvice coming up tomorrow, and so much to follow. The two of us will be here for about another week and a half together, at which point Mackenzie will leave and I will stay for a couple days by myself, only to be reunited in Budapest for a final couple days before making our way together back up to Scandinavia.

We are so, so incredibly lucky and grateful for our time over here, and are really trying to make the most of it. So far, I’ve been able to hit 15 countries, and am looking forward to adding plenty more to it on this trip! Can’t wait to write about all the many adventures we go on in the next couple weeks.