In this video we spend one day in Amsterdam touring the City and seeing as many sites and attractions we can in a short period of time.
We start the day with a free walking tour around Amsterdam from Sandemans Tours. The Amsterdam Free Tour starts in front of the National Monument in Dam Square and we walk past the quintessential Amsterdam canals, bridges and houses before discovering the Jewish Quarter, hidden churches and Multatuli’s giant head as well as learning about the Dutch bike culture. More information on the Walking Tour can be found Here: https://bit.ly/3G1EwNL
Alternatively check out my favourite FREE Walking Tour Company GuruWalk here: https://bit.ly/3QGpNg8
After our free walking tour we explored the city by ourselves, first we headed for a traditional Dutch pancake house for our lunch. then visited some museums.
In the afternoon we visited the Anne Frank House which is a must for any visitor to Amsterdam.
Epic European Adventure Series
Episode 01 – Home to London: https://youtu.be/4484soNCFis
Episode 02 – London to Paris: https://youtu.be/f6WBHnsoJJI
Episode 03 – Disneyland Paris: https://youtu.be/XbkifI9NW3I
Episode 04 – Walt Disney Studios: https://youtu.be/X71g8-GuYtE
Episode 05 – Paris to Zurich: https://youtu.be/g7J81WCtdaE
Episode 06 – Zurich to Milan: https://youtu.be/fkzMDeXmh6I
Episode 07 – Pisa: https://youtu.be/ZsvR-tQjC0k
Episode 08 – Florence: https://youtu.be/KbJ48w5cYg8
Episode 09 – Rome: https://youtu.be/j4l8Uq0TRYg
Episode 10 – Vatican City and Rome: https://youtu.be/6WgsH5U8QqM
Episode 11 – Pompeii and Sorrento: https://youtu.be/J6g8YY6GM_M
Episode 12 – Capri and Amalfi Coast: https://youtu.be/fGtfJFkxso8
Episode 13 – Venice: https://youtu.be/TGf2D_8yRuY
Episode 14 – Gardaland: https://youtu.be/LnUQKFugcLI
Episode 15 – Gardaland, Venice, Sleeper train to Vienna: https://youtu.be/CfvXeJEGFP4
Episode 16 – Vienna: https://youtu.be/0flP1AA4Irs
Episode 17 – Kraków: https://youtu.be/LVX5zMv-0NU
Episode 18 – Prague: https://youtu.be/fpGxZzSFOdQ
Episode 19 – Berlin: https://youtu.be/4L_v15HCjt8
Episode 20 – Berlin to Amsterdam: https://youtu.be/hucOJtajcNg
Episode 21 – Amsterdam: https://youtu.be/jiDbSVHQi0U
Travelshorts’ Epic European Adventure is a family travel vlog about a father, son and daughter travelling around Europe over three weeks using only Trains, buses, boats and taxis. The plan was to see as much as possible whilst still reducing our carbon footprint. In this 22 episode series we visit France, Switzerland, Italy, Vatican City, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and of course the UK. The goal was to have as much fun as possible and create memories that will last a life time.
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Content:
00:00 Introduction
00:32 Breakfast in Amsterdam
00:53 Dam Square in Amsterdam
01:22 Amsterdam Free Walking Tour
16:23 Touring around Amsterdam
17:11 Rembrandt Square Amsterdam
17:22 Pancakes in Amsterdam
17:55 Walking around Amsterdam
18:19 Ruks Museum Amsterdam
20:01 More walking around Amsterdam
20:49 Shopping in Amsterdam
21:08 Trying different drinks in Amsterdam
22:15 Walking to the Anne Frank House
22:59 Anne Frank House Review
23:46 Anne Frank Monument
25:13 Dinner in Amsterdam
25:44 Walking back to Hotel in Amsterdam
26:06 Back at the Van Gelder Hotel in Amsterdam
26:37 Thanks for Watching
Hey, everyone, and welcome to Amsterdam. Today’s the 21st day of our epic European adventure, and we’re going to be exploring this city by doing a walking tour and also visiting the Anne Frank House. Let’s start things off with some breakfast shall we?.
We’ve got sausage rolls and a pizza from the supermarket across the road. It’s over by there. I think this fella wants some of our sausage rolls. He’s not going to get any. We’ve just got to Dam Square. You can see me the palace is behind me there.
We’re just waiting to start our free walking tour. The company we’re using today is Sandemans the same one we used in the Czech Republic in Prague in a few episodes back. If you want to check that free walking tour out, just look for a previous episode of this series of epic European adventures.
We’ve got about another 10 minutes before we start the tour, so hopefully our guide should be here soon. I would try to bring you, if you were my friend from abroad and said, Show me Amsterdam. He said, if you want to text me saying, ‘Hey, Alex, we’re finally coming over,
Show me some stuff that’s really Amsterdam. By the way, also always ask that if you have friends about the name three things we definitely should not do. They tend to be the top three in the Tripadvisor, by the way. You can find out. Number one would be Dam Square.
Immediately, if you live here, you never go to Dam Square. It’s that square in your big touristic city, you never hang out here. It’s the tourist part of our city, so we don’t get out of here as quickly as possible. Of course, if you want to know details
Despite my sarcasm, it’s a thick layer of sarcasm in front of you. Just ask. I will explain whatever you need to know. Right over there is an old church named the New Church. We’ll be doing this more on the tour. We have a big grey bridge called the Blue Bridge.
It’s Amsterdam. That’s how we do. Sadly, under construction at the moment, there are monuments commemorating the Second World War. It’s our national monument. We’re undergoing renovation for the next couple of months. You’ll have to come back another time to see it. Every May fourth,
We have our commemoration, our remembranceance of the World War. It’s quite an impressive event. Tens of thousands of people on this square, complete silence. Not only the people on the square, but there’s no trams driving, airplanes are not allowed to fly over Amsterdam. There’s nothing. There’s no traffic. It’s complete silence.
For not the only two minutes in this city per year because it’s a city, it’s always noisy. Very impressive moment on the years. Many misconception in our city for people who move here. I’ll explain in a second. Including my girlfriend, they make a vital mistake of getting their
Wrong tattoo and lots of things everywhere on stones and buildings. The reason is it’s not xxx a complete misconception. It’s actually a cross. That’s where the big misconception starts. It’s a St. Andrews cross. It’s supposed to be like a squared cross. It’s a crucifix, basically, on its side.
The Scottish flag, for instance, is a St. Andrews cross. It’s a flag symbol. You’ll see it everywhere. Now, the question is, of course, when you walk through a city far away from home, it’s like, Why did this happen? The real answer is very disappointing. That’s why I’ll give you the famous lie first.
The famous the lie that they tell on boat tours and everything is that every cross represents a dark passage in Amsterdam history, which is a city fire, a flood, and the black plague. That’s like trailer logic. It’s also not true. It’s completely not true. We don’t know is the real answer.
And for this job, that’s just not good for the entertainment value of your tour. The problem is this question is number one, the most asked question on any tour ever, and that’s where the lie comes out. So if you go on a boat to later, especially the ones that cost less than
€20, you’ll get a 14-year-old driving a boat with a cigarette in his mouth, Welcome to Amsterdam. And he’ll probably say that to you. It’s not true. Don’t embarrass the guy, but he’s trying his best as well. It’s not known as reality. Now, the xxx part is funny because
A lot of people that move to the city live in an expat bubble. They know zero Dutch people. It’s a completely separate society that lives straight across each other. They then meet like five Dutch people every once in a while. The Metro, they speak English to them
And they get angry that the Dutch never speak Dutch to them. It’s very interesting situation. Then they get because they love Amsterdam and it’s easy to fall in love with the city. It’s very alive. It’s like a tiny metropolis. Everything that you have in New York, but then in a tiny little service.
They get xxx tattoos and then they meet their first Amsterdamer there. I said, Why do you have xxx over there, which is like a dirty American thing, of course. Why do you have that? Because I love the city. We’ll keep on playing that. We don’t understand what mistake we made.
Why you have the letter X like that? My girlfriend, this is this big. The letter is X, X, X, and it means nothing to Amsterdam. Now, if we walk into that direction, then we walk outside of the city limits of the old, old, old Amsterdam.
There are so many different areas of Amsterdam in a very short amount of time. You have to understand, though, how on time scale of the planet and human history, how young this city is. 1275 is the first time that the word Amsterdam is written down somewhere.
It’s when the guy that rules this part of the world gave Amsterdam a tax credit. Yes, it’s tax this time. We’re going to talk about tax. We’ll talk about insurance policies later as well. You came to Amsterdam, rock and roll on this walking tour. You have no idea how exciting everything will get.
Now, the tax credit made a big difference, made that the Amsterdamers could start trading. It was always a dam in the river of Amstel. Amsterdam, that’s your name right over there. Then suddenly there was business. There was a reason to build a house or two wooden houses on the swamp.
For a couple of hundred years, the trade kept on expanding and expanding and expanding, and the Dutch started building their own ships, selling them to other countries, but mainly sailing out to far away, far away lands like this part of the world, Malaysia,
Which you now call Indonesia, that whole part of the world for the trade. At that point, the Dutch East India Company was founded, and that changed everything in Dutch history. That company was rich. The richest company still, some historians say it’s unfathomable, but the richest company still today in human history.
An estimate from one writer that’s just very telling. Nobody knows if this is true, but an estimate is that at its peak, it was worth the current equivalent of the GDP of Germany and Japan, two of the richest countries on the planet, combined in one company. That’s the Dutch East India companies.
Over here, we walked into the Jewish neighbourhoods a part of it. I can already tell you a large part of the tour happens to be in the Jewish neighborhoods because large parts are interesting to look at, and we’re starting at the least interesting to look at apart because honestly, look around you.
Now, in the 1850s, the train had to be everywhere. It was going to be the Industrial Revolution, that era. In Amsterdam, the idea was trains need to be here, and we’re Amsterdam, so we need to be in the forefront. We’re going to build our train station
On a man-made island in the sea so the whole world goes woo, right over there. Then we built it. It was done. The building is incredible. You can tour it with a historian, with other tour guides for hours. That’s how many nice details are in there.
They will also, if you ask them if they’re true historian, agree that it should not exist. It’s at the worst points they could have built. No one goes, Oh, at Central Station, they go like, Oh, that’s a nice building, and then they move on.
The tragedy is that it should have been in the south of our city. We used to be like Venice, like a Horseshoe sitting in the water, and then they cut it off with a big train track to the north of Central Station. It’s an impressive structure.
It’s standing on tens of thousands of wooden piles to keep it up from the saggy soil that the city has made on, but it cut it off. Walking tour would be highly disappointing if you didn’t have a big statue somewhere on your walking tour. I tried to find a guy on a horse.
You always want a guy on a horse when you go abroad. We don’t have a guy on a horse or walking distance. You’ll have to do with my hero in history, Baruch Spinoza, Benedict Spinoza, if you want to Latinify him.
But Baruch was his real name, the son of Jewish refugees and one of those rebels. That’s why I liked him. If you want to be creative with it, like Hollywood director creative, like the Sid Visions of the 1600s without a bass guitar. He was basically one of those people that loved upsetting people,
But highly intelligent, one of the bigger brains in our species history. He came up with concepts of freedoms that people back then didn’t know they wanted. That’s how abstract this man works. A lot of the things that he wrote down, and this is scientific,
This is not like looking at the sky and I think it works like this, he deducted things on scientific basis were accepted hundreds of years later into theory as a real reality and real science. I’ll give you a small little occurrence in human history that he actually pitched as an idea,
Democracy, the morning idea of it, the separation of a state from you, the person, basically the individual freedoms. He was the first one who pitched that. Those five houses often get called the dancing houses of Amsterdam because they look like they’re dancing, but all leaning to one side.
If they look like they are sinking, why is that? It’s because they are sinking. Amsterdam is built on a swamp. City burnt down twice. Again, you need a statue on your walking tour and you need your city fire on a walking tour, we had two of them back to back.
Major tragedies in the late 1400s, the entire city got destroyed twice. And around that same time, the trade came in later, the Dutch East India Company, and suddenly the necessity to build fireproof houses started to accelerate stone houses on a swamp. You can’t do it. You’ll go straight in.
The only way to get around it, this necessity of building a lot of houses is building them small and narrow so that there’s more people that can build and also to build them with foundations that go into the ground. Just like in Venice, they go 10,
15 meters into the ground until they hit clay or sand or something that’s not a swamp, and that’s what they’re resting on. Great for the 1600s. 1650, it still looks fine. 1675, the windows spontaneously break and you wonder what happened. Was it divine intervention? No, it was gravity.
The house is slowly being pushed down and down and down and the vulnerable parts get hurt. The vulnerable part, especially with older houses, you can see it if you look at them, is the outside. It’s the bricks, but mainly the window sills, the actual window, and everything that’s around there.
That’s what you’re looking at. These houses are not so much really falling over as basically dislodged. They’re out of shape. This is all UNESCO, all of it. 14 km starting at the Mint Tower over there, same thing. Basically a city limit tower from the 1300s.
The expansion of the ridge is what you’re looking in that direction. lot of romantic selfies on the Walter Suskin Bridge. Beautiful right over there. You might want to know the year that this bridge that you want to photograph was built. This bridge was manufactured and constructed in the year 2022. February this year.
This is when the Walter Suskin Bridge was built, and it’s a beautiful replica, exact replica of the same bridge that was before here. Fifty years before that exact replica. The reason is you can see at the chain, it’s a chain. It’s a drawing bridge. It opens and closes thousands of times per day.
Just by simple Dutch traffic laws, it needs to be replaced. The mindset is old and quaint, but if it opens and closes, safety laws get replaced. We’re going to walk through it. I know you’re on holiday, but this is an important part of our city
For obvious reasons that you can come up with yourself. But also, we have a thing in Dutch culture that we’re most really wanting to look our own history in the eye very well. We’re going to walk through it. Every stone is a person. You’ll see their name. This is 100% documented.
This event with every sick or casualty result is in the heart. Their alphabetic, you’ll see their date of birth and the age that the person was murdered. The word jar means year in Dutch language is how you express an age of so many years.
The shape of, especially the glass ornament on top is a Hebrew sentence, le Zegher, which translates to in memory. We’re going to walk through it for a couple of minutes and then we’ll meet on the other side. the last of the tour, a view that most Dutch tourists see.
The skinny bridge, this bridge right over here is the Dutchess thing you can do. Put on the VPN at home, the thing that you use to watch Australian Netflix, basically that one. Then you’ll go to Google, type in Amsterdam, you’ll see this bridge. You won’t see a red light district.
You won’t see a cannabis leaf. You’ll see canals, you’ll see cheese. Not that much with cheese, I think you’ll see the skinny bridge. Now, the skinny bridge, just like the blue bridge, is not anything cool story behind it. The amount of nonsense that’s being said
About it, about body size and stuff like that, you could forget about it. In Dutch Mager and old Dutch men’s narrow. End of story. Mager modern times translates to skinny. It’s a weird translation. Just like the Walshuskin Bridge, if not an ancient bridge, the connection is from the 1300s already
Before Amsterdam got as far out in the Amsterdam Reparation water right now. The bridge itself from the 1913 is very much overdue for maintenance or even replacing the top with the picture. In that direction, you’ll see the historic water locks over there, so those white holes right over there.
They don’t open and close anymore. They’re there just for the, let’s call heritage, which can actually recognise what the city looks like. We learned from the ’70s, hopefully it seems that the everything is preserved. But the hotel with flags over there is another monument of our city, is the Amstel Hotel.
If you’re thinking, Oh, that looks cool. Next time, I’ll stay in the Amstel Hotel. Do it after you sold your company to Silicon Valley. It is an expensive hotel. Mick Jagger’s favourite hotel in the world. It gives you an idea of the price points that we’re talking about, not the Holiday Inn.
It is an incredibly nice place. You can have lunch over there, feel like a rich person. I’m sold Dam Square. That’s where we started. You keep walking with the river to your right and you end up at Dam Square. If you think, Where’s Dam Square?
After 25, 30 minutes and you see office parks and a business district pop up, you walked into the wrong direction, so turn around. That’s basically where you need to turn. We just finished our free walking tour done by Sanderman Tours. We finished here at the Skinny Bridge,
Which you might be able to see just behind me there. He was a really informative guide. We enjoyed it. Matthew enjoyed it. Even Holly enjoyed it, and she doesn’t really enjoy walking tours very much. So even though it was a free walking tour, obviously, you do need to tip the guides afterwards.
So we gave €30, €10 each, which I guess is what you’d pay for a couple of hours walking tour if you were to do it separately. But yeah, really enjoyed it. We’re now going to head for lunch. We’re going to look for some traditional pancakes if we can find them.
Hopefully down the road that way, there’s something in Rembrandt Square. Lets go So that’s my big pancake with Nutella and ice cream. That’s normal size. It is quite big but it’s quite flat, so it doesn’t tend to be that much. So this is Holly’s mini pancake with strawberries and blueberry. This is
Bananas, whipped cream, and ice cream. We’ve just had our pancakes at that Pancake shop. It tasted okay. the service was a bit long, but doesn’t really matter about that. Matthew, we enjoyed it. Holly liked the fruit. She didn’t like the pancakes. I thought it was good. None of us managed to finish it.
It’s quite big, those pancakes. Anyway, we’re on our way to the Ruks Museum now, which is just over there. So it’ll be there in a few minutes. Unfortunately, the Ruks Museum is only allowing pre-booked ticket holders in only at the moment,
Which every single museum we booked so far, I’ve done everything in advance, but we weren’t planning on coming to this museum at all. Just I was quite close to the Pancake House, so I thought we’d come here and just take a look around. But you can’t buy tickets on the door anymore.
Just to pre-warn people if they’re going to turn up. Oh, well, we’ve got the rest of Amsterdam to explore. We’re just going to walk around for a little bit more. Currently, we’re just sitting in a park taking a rest, but we’ll go for a walk around.
Later on today, we’ve got tickets to the Anne Frank House, which I think every person who ever comes to Amsterdam goes to the Anne Frank House. We haven’t got any plans. We’re just walking around. I know it might be a bit of a boring video, but I hope you enjoy it.
-we’ve got to have to book tickets. -van Gogh Museum is right over there. I’ve just had a look if we can book tickets to the Van Gogh Museum, which is just over there. But unfortunately, all the dates for this week sold out already. That’s sad, isn’t it? Hi. Yeah.
Again, I didn’t really plan Amsterdam very well other than the Anne Frank House and the walking tour, because Amsterdam was a bit of a last-minute idea to come to. Yeah, you can see today is the 15th of August, all this week. No tickets are there. 15th? Yeah, today is the 15th of August.
I don’t know if this shows up on the video, but all these houses are leaning over here because of the way that they’re actually built. They’re foundations of long logs which go on right down into the ground into bedrock, well, clay in this case. Over the centuries,
They’ve sunk a bit, causing a lot of the buildings to just move slightly. We’re back in the hotel room. We’ve walked around for a good couple of hours and on the way here, we just stopped in the supermarket, which is almost downstairs from the hotel.
I bought a selection of some fruits, cheeses and some weird drinks. When I say weird drinks, I mean, we’ve got a Marshmallows flavour cola, a coconut flavour cola, and also just some water and some fanta lemon as well. I’ve got a nice selection of fruits here, so raspberry, blackberries, and blueberry.
I just grab some bit of cheese, for savoury flavour. But yeah, Marshmallow, Cola, and coconut-flavoured Cola. Never seen those before. I think Matthew wants to try them out. Okay, what drink have you got there, Matthew? Some Marshmallow-flavoured Cola, and I’m going to try it. It smells like bubblegum.
It’s very fizzy, but it doesn’t taste that bad. -coconut-flavoured Cola. -okay. It smells like socks. It might just be my feet, but I think it’s the string. That’s even fizzier. Do you like it? It’s okay. It doesn’t look like you do like it.
I just moved it away because I almost got it all over me. We’ve had a good rest in the hotel room, and now we’re walking towards the Anne Frank house. We’ve got our tickets for 6:30. We needed to book them well in advance, otherwise there’s no chance of getting in on a day.
You’re also not allowed to film, so we’ll do some filming outside, and then I’ll talk about the experience afterwards. We’ve just come out of the Anne Frank house, which you can see behind us. As I mentioned earlier, you’re obviously not allowed to film or take photographs in there.
But obviously, that didn’t stop a number of people, which I think is pretty disrespectful, if I’m honest. I’ve been there before about 12 years, but I want Matthew and Holly to experience it, especially where we’ve been in the last few weeks. Obviously, we’ve been to Austin, we’ve been to Berlin.
We’ve seen lots of Holocaust memorials. It is a sobering place to go to. It’s interesting to see where these people stayed for quite a long period of time before they were actually sold out and captured. We’re now walking up the street
To actually see the Anne Frank Monument with a statue dedicated to her. When we’re there, I’ll show you that as well. Here is the Anne Frank Monument, just around the corner from her old house. Well, the building where she stayed. We’ve just finished at the Anne Frank
Monument, which is just behind me over my shoulder there. It’s getting a bit late in the evening now, so we’re going to get some dinner. After that, we’re going to head back to the hotel and prepare for our big journey back home tomorrow. Tomorrow is the 22nd day of our epic
European adventure, and it’s time to go home. But first, we’re going to go and get some dinner. We just need to find a restaurant that we like. I’m absolutely gutted the cheese museum is closed. It’s decided to rain a bit while we’re walking to find some food. It’s not too bad, at least.
We’re getting a bit wet, but well, it’s the last day, doesn’t matter. Holly has gone for pasta bolognese. Matthew has gone for his ever favourite, fish and chips. I have gone for a barbecue burger with skin-on-fries. We’ve just finished our dinner at the cornerhouse, which is just behind me down this long alleyway.
We’re heading back to the hotel and that’s going to be it for the night. All right, so when we were getting out there and we were playing, the lady there gave us three pepperments. We’re back at our hotel. We’ve walked from the restaurant where we had quite a nice dinner, wasn’t it, Holly?
Tonight is night 21 of our epic European adventure, which means it’s the last night of our trip. Tomorrow, we’re going to be heading home. First, we’re on a train from Amsterdam to Brussels. Then we’re getting to Eurostar from Brussels to London, then onward from London to Crewe,
Crew to Chester and then Chester to North Wales, when we’ll be home tomorrow night, about 10 o’clock in the evening. So if you made it this far in this episode, thank you so much for watching. And here’s Holly with a special message. If you liked this video,
Please let them to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell button. Bye. Bye. Next time on Travel Short’s epic European adventure.
2 Comments
Looks like a good tour
How much were the Anne Frank tickets?