For the last 7 years we have done adventures which require at least one night’s stay somewhere, but after researching Amsterdam (The Dam) with its fairly cheap flights (£90 return) and ridiculous hotel prices (£250 minimum for one night), I decided that we should try a day trip; out early at 6.20am and back at 10.10pm with KLM. Excellent airline and would be more than happy to fly with them again.

Travel

My parents kindly took us to the airport so we didn’t need to pay for airport parking (FYI about £35-40 for 24 hours at Leeds Bradford) and dropped us off by ‘Hawthorne Farm’ Carvery pub at the top of the road – you cannot drop off anywhere near the airport itself and yes there are cameras so will will get fined if you do. 

Check in was dead easy as we only had my handbag – seriously if you can fly this way, do it! There are plenty of restaurants, bars, cafés open at Leeds Bradford including a Boots and a Starbucks. I grabbed a couple of bottles of water – Boots is probably the best place as there’s normally a ’2 for £3’ deal. KLM are a great airline. I would totally recommend for any journey; long or short.  

The best/cheapest way to get to the city centre from the airport is by train – 15-20mins roughly. €5.50 per person per trip (no cheaper return fare unfortunately).  You can buy them from the manned counters or the blue and yellow machines, as we did, which are dotted all over – and YES the instructions are in English as well as Dutch.

Places to visit/things to do

As Steve is really into anatomy and I how the body works, I bought tickets for the ‘Body Worlds’ museum. It has hundreds of specimens of the body on show. It was really informative and interesting, even for a non medic like me, and very interactive which is good. At the end you can also do a body mass scan which tells you your BMI and overall body build up. Mine was generally within range but my legs are too fat…shocker!

Other places on the ‘to do’ list should definitely be the Flower market (Bloemenmarkt), the Royal Palace, Dam Square and the Anne Frank museum. Amsterdam is also very pretty with its canals and cute little bridges therefore great for people just wanting to have a wander round the city – lots of cobbled streets though, so I wouldn’t recommend heels! And because of the abundance of canals there are several canal cruises – ours set off from the Double Tree, Hilton (to the left of the train station) for the Lovers Canal Cruise – Lovers is the name not the type of cruise….Steve isn’t THAT romantic! Haha. At 16€ each it wasn’t a bad price although I do think it is probably something you’d do only once. 

Of course I couldn’t go to Amsterdam and not talk about the Red Light District. You certainly see some sights there!  What I was surprised at were the amount of very young children walking round with their parents. Can’t say I really agree with this but each to their own. Also round that area there was a strong smell of cannabis coming from the cafés and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these children were getting high from the fumes! Haha – spaced out 2 year old alert! 

Food

If you are having a breakfast/brunch in ‘The Dam’ then I would STRONGLY recommend ‘The Pancake Bakery’. It is incredibly popular so expect a wait – ours was only 20mins so not too bad. Steve had the bacon and cheese omelette and I had the Dutch pancake (obviously!) Holy moly it was a huge sweet pancake – basically diabetes on a plate! We also ordered some ‘proffetje’, a traditional dutch dish – like sugary dough balls. 

I would also recommend trying ‘patatje oorlog’ whilst in Amsterdam too – basically french fries with a peanut butter type sauce, sounds gross but OMG gorgeous! The best place is apparently ‘Mannekan Pis’ (according to another blogger). It isn’t a restaurant, more a takeaway, so we got some and then sat at the side of a canal and ate it, soaking up some sun. 

Final thoughts

All in all it was a VERY long day but there was enough to do to fill it out but see the most common ’must see’ things. This trip showed us that we can get up early, go somewhere ‘different’ and come back all in a day. I have a feeling we will be doing more 1-day hops like this – and I hope you guys do too!