Vacation in Amsterdam + New Year
We are back from vacation. After Christmas, we took the train 🚅 to Amsterdam 🌷 for a vacation and to escape the usual New Year's Eve ceremonies.
At first, I was unsure if it will go well when our family sits for more than 5 hours on a train. But it went surprisingly well. We had a first-class cabin on the train. The little one lay most of the time on the bottom to hear and feel the clacking of the tracks while playing with his toys. With the oldest, we played games, and he watched on his tablet while the little one slept. Overall, the time flew by and we arrived in Amsterdam. The trip back home was nearly the same. Besides that, the Deutsche Bahn, which a German can't be proud of, decided to make our Wagon dead and unusable (without a warning or an information). So we needed to find a new place, luckily we found a cabin with an elderly couple from the Netherlands.
It was also our first city trip with the kids. Most cities are not very child-friendly. Especially if you have a stroller. Amsterdam is no exception here. Everything is cramped to fit as many tourists as possible, in one tiny place. But somehow, we managed it and had a good time. 😚 We saw plenty of cool things. We went to the A*DAM lookout, which gave a nice view over the city. My wife also took the swing on the roof. But for me, it was enough to just be on the lookout. 🫠 And I had my first VR experience there, by sitting in a rollercoaster fighting Kong and Dragons while visiting the city from above. 🥊 Next to the A*DAM lookout is This is Holland, which is an impressive compact 1 hour tour to see a bit of the history of the country with a final flight in a 5D cinema through the whole country.
With Kids, a MUST-SEE is the NEMO science museum. Sadly, we got a late slot and had not enough time to visit and try everything there. A really incredible experience for Kids and Parents. You can also do some experiments there. We had luck, it was the final round. So much to learn and see. For all ages.
To get the body a bit of challenge, we went to the Jump-Square. It was a bit full, because of Sunday afternoon, but they managed too good so that you can jump enough to get exhausted. 😎
Which I really liked was the presence of all the bikes and huge bike lanes. At first, it felt too exotic because Germany has cars and gives a shit about cycling. But one can get used to it, it felt really nice. 🚲 The next astounding achievement you have there is the Public Transport. Simply impressive, how this simple system works and why is not a standard everywhere. The simplest thing is, if you have connected your bankcard with your phone, you just hold it on the scanner while entering and leaving, and you pay for the distance and not the time. Done. That's it. The price combines from a base price and the distance to the place you travel. For some places, we needed to go over the canal by boat without a payment. This boat is also accessible by a bicycle. 👌
Things I did not like there was the waste you saw on every corner and the water. I think that Amsterdam is not representable for the whole country or because we visited in the holiday season. But to compare it with Berlin, Amsterdam felt dirty. 🗑️
To wrap things up. It was a nice vacation trip to a city we have not visited before. From our hotel we were also able to see a lot of the fireworks around the city. Impressive and insane how much money got wasted in these hours. 🎆
79 of #100DaysToOffload
Thoughts? Discuss...