This is a trip that’s been on my bucket list forever, so you can imagine my excitement when I finally booked a 3 day trip to Amsterdam…actually so excited I don’t think I really processed it was happening until I was there.
Regardless, the dream trip was booked, myself and Lizzie were spending 3 days in the big city in the Netherlands.
The essential information:
• 2nd – 4th July 2023
• Birmingham > Amsterdam
• Conscious Hotel, Vondelpark – booked via booking.com
Our flight was at 6am from Birmingham airport, a great idea in theory – flight at 6am, in Dam by 8am…the only problem was getting to the airport for 4am, thank you dad for the lift!
The airport is typically my least favourite part of any holiday but with Lizzie being a seasoned pro I instantly felt at ease…until we couldn’t find the check-in desk and couldn’t load our boarding passes, but we made it through and to our flight and I didn’t have a complete meltdown, yay!
DAY ONE:
Once we’d done all the security bits at the airport (yay for the first time I’ve had my passport stamped too), we hopped on a train and a tram to get to our hotel. Honestly, the process was confusing and we got lost but we found our way eventually…and fyi, the paper tickets scan on the machines like a contactless card which really confused us when jumping off the first train.
Once at the tram stop, we purchased a travel pass to get us around the city for the next few days. I believe we purchased one for 48 hours for around $15 – we probably would’ve been better off with a 72 hour ticket but either way, it served us well for the next few days.
We stayed at the Conscious Hotel in Vondelpark, they have a number of these hotels around, all eco-friendly, sustainable hotels and varying in designs and I must admit, ours was my favourite with it’s pink and green decor – also the foyer/cafe was gorgeous too!
…Everything was a vibe and totally instagrammable, okay?
We landed in Amsterdam at 8am and were near our hotel by 10am – unfortunately we weren’t able to check in just yet, so we dropped our bags with the staff and headed to brunch at Corner Bakery – we both opted for the French toast and omg, it was delicious…I also tried the Red Velvet mocha, which I can’t say I loved, but I appreciate the attempt. We did want to go for the funky shakes but once we’d eaten, we just couldn’t face it!
For our first day, we probably ended up doing 25,000 steps, yet we didn’t look for too much, we either had plans to see other things on other days or were distracted by getting photos…and I also get completely overwhelmed on my first day (no matter how much planning I do beforehand), so we took our trip, explored and saw the city without doing anything of much significance.
We grabbed some fries at Fable Friet which were delicious, literally fries, mayo and cheese, but omg, so yummy! We found some steps to sit on and take in the atmosphere, before continuing to wonder the streets, I did drag Lizzie to find the Fault in Our Stars bench – which was actually underwhelming once we arrived and other people were sitting on them, but hey, it felt iconic and I enjoyed little things like this.
We continued to explore around before finding the bloemenmarkt – floating flower market which we took as an opportunity to get some colourful photos for the gram, but honestly after a few more hours of exploring, we were done in, tired and in pain – so we headed back to our hotel, ordered McDonalds and watching Gilmore Girls for the evening, and honestly it was perfect!
DAY TWO:
We started our day at sticky fingers, which is the cafe connected to the conscious hotel next door to ours (essentially the same food & drink were available at the cafe in our hotel lobby, but this theming was cute and we needed shots for the gram, okay?).
We had a pretty chilled out start to the day, after breakfast we headed into the city centre and went straight to find the wake me when I’m famous wall – which is an iconic spot online, it was a little battered and bruised but we got some cute shots and that’s what was important. To be honest, we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon wondering around, exploring a little more…and desperately looking for some public toilets! Oh, and picking up a stroopwafels from Van Wonderen, a good choice but I wouldn’t say it’s worth the hype it gets online..
This afternoon was then spent on a Canal Cruise that Lizzie had booked for us prior to the trip. There’s plenty of canal cruises in Amsterdam and I’m sure you’re able to pay as you arrive, however we opted to pre-book with Floating Amsterdam. We arrived early as recommended and climbed aboard and I think got the best seat available – which as two insta-girlies, this was a priority and was well thought out before we arrived.
The hour long cruise was actually really fun, everyone else on the boat was actually so preoccupied with getting high that the team didn’t even continue the tour once they realised no-one was listening to them, so they played music, served drinks and let everyone have a peaceful hour seeing the city. Honestly, we loved having that time to just sit back, chat and see everything too.
We basically spent the rest of the afternoon exploring around the city and finding essential spots for photos.
The evening we had dinner booked at Black and Blue, which Lizzie had been to before and highly recommended, and to be honest, I 100% have to agree with her – the steak, boy it was delicious!
DAY THREE:
This was our last day in Amsterdam, we packed up, checked out and left our bags with the reception desk at our hotel before heading to Sticky Fingers for coffee and pastry, again.
Like I mentioned we both love to create content for instagram, so we used the morning of our last day to find any spots we hadn’t already to shoot content, we used the tram to travel into the city centre and our first stop was the Floating Houses at Damrak – we’d already gotten photos by plenty of other floating houses but the pinterest boards told me that this was more iconic, so we needed to go!
Nearby we attempted to queue at Tony Chocolonely Superstore to create our own chocolate bars – but the queues were just a little too long and we didn’t have the time to wait.
We wondered to the Rijksmuseum but decided we didn’t have enough time to explored, and spent the rest of the afternoon, wondering from their back towards our hotel. I think we both need this period to slow down and prep ourselves for the journey home.
…Once we were back home, we both had to head straight to sleep before going back to work the next day, but, Amsterdam, you were perfect! Thank you Lizzie for the best first experience of the city and for being my travel buddy for this trip.
