Things to Do in Amsterdam: What We Actually Do When We Go
We just moved to Eindhoven, which puts Amsterdam about an hour and 15 minutes away by train. Before that we spent four years in Rotterdam, which made Amsterdam practically a neighbour. Either way we've been going regularly for years and we keep going back. That alone tells you something. Some weekends we plan it out: book museum tickets, pick a neighborhood to walk through, find somewhere new to eat. Other times we just hop on the train and figure it out when we get there. Either approach works. Amsterdam is one of those rare cities that rewards both.
Rex comes with us whenever we can make it work, which changes the rhythm of a day there in ways that are actually kind of nice. More time in Vondelpark, more wandering, fewer rushed queues. Between the four of us, me, Lisa, Dylan and the dog, we've covered a lot of ground in this city and we keep finding things we haven't done yet.
What makes Amsterdam worth returning to, over and over, is that it has so many different versions of itself. There's the postcard city of canal houses and tulips. There's the museum city with some of the best art collections in Europe. There's the neighborhood city of quiet streets, local markets and coffee shops with no tourist in sight. And there's the Noord city across the water, the creative and industrial version that most visitors never reach. We've spent time in all of them and this guide covers the things that have consistently been worth our time.
This is not an exhaustive list of every museum and attraction in Amsterdam. It's the things we actually do when we go, plus a couple of honest takes on what we'd skip or argue about. If you want the full picture on where to sleep, check our Amsterdam hotel guide. If you're visiting in autumn, we have a separate piece on fall in Amsterdam worth reading first.
We also did a full episode on Amsterdam on the getAwayZ podcast if you want to hear us talk through the city before you go.
Now, on to the actual guide.
Canal Tours
Canal tours are where we start every visit with friends or family from home, and after doing quite a few of them we keep coming back to the same one. The first canal tour we ever did in Amsterdam was a small group cruise that includes drinks and bitterballen, and it set the bar so high that we've never felt the need to switch. We've taken almost every guest who visits us on this exact tour and nobody has ever complained.
Small group boats are worth booking over the big glass-roof vessels for a few reasons. They slip into side canals the larger tourist boats can't reach, they feel more personal and you actually get to talk to people rather than sitting in a floating bus. On a sunny afternoon, cruising the canals with a cold drink and a plate of bitterballen is one of the genuinely great ways to spend two hours in Amsterdam.
The canals are also just the best way to understand the city's layout on a first visit. Amsterdam is built in concentric rings, and from the water you get a sense of how the neighborhoods sit in relation to each other in a way that a map doesn't quite give you. The houses lean forward over the water at odd angles because of the wooden foundations settling over centuries. The houseboats are lived in by real people who have gardens and bicycles and cats on the roof. A good guide points all of this out. It makes every walk you take afterward feel more anchored.
Museumplein: Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and MOCO
We've spent entire mornings around Museumplein and still haven't seen everything the Rijksmuseum holds. It's that big. Dutch masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer are the obvious draw, but the decorative arts, the smaller side rooms, the model ships, there's always something in a corner you walk past the first time and stop at the second. Plan two to three hours minimum and book ahead, especially in spring and summer when tickets sell out days in advance.
The building itself is worth paying attention to. The Rijksmuseum was designed by Pierre Cuypers in the late 19th century and the architecture is extraordinary, all neo-Gothic and Renaissance detail, with a covered passageway that cyclists and pedestrians use as a shortcut through the building. Even if you spent an afternoon just sitting in the garden courtyard outside, you'd have gotten something from the visit. We always try to go early in the morning when the main galleries are quiet and the light through the windows is at its best.
The Van Gogh Museum next door is a different experience but just as good. Seeing the paintings in person rather than on a screen is genuinely worth the trip. The scale of some pieces, the brushwork up close, the letters he wrote displayed alongside the work. It changes how you think about him. The museum traces his life and work chronologically, which means you start with his early dark Dutch paintings and end with the bright, frantic work from Arles and Saint-Rémy. The progression is striking. Again, book well ahead.
MOCO is smaller and easier to overlook, but worth an hour if you're already at the square. The rotating contemporary exhibitions have included Banksy and Basquiat and it tends to be less crowded than the two main museums. Good for an afternoon add-on, particularly if you have someone in your group who finds the older collections less interesting. The format is accessible and the shows are usually genuinely surprising.
Get Rijksmuseum tickets | Get Van Gogh Museum tickets | Get MOCO tickets
The Jordaan and the Nine Streets
If we only had half a day in Amsterdam with no particular plan, we'd spend it in the Jordaan. It's our favorite neighborhood in the city and has been every time we've visited. The streets are narrow and quiet, the canals are smaller and less trafficked than the main ring, and the buildings have that particular Amsterdam quality of being beautiful without trying to be. Flower boxes in every window, bicycles chained to every railing, cats watching from window ledges.
The Jordaan was historically a working-class neighborhood, home to tradespeople and immigrants, and that history gives it a grounded quality that the more polished parts of the center don't have. It gentrified gradually over the last few decades and is now full of independent boutiques, small galleries, wine bars and some of the best restaurants in Amsterdam. But it hasn't lost the feel of a real neighborhood. People actually live here. You see them shopping at the Noordermarkt on Saturday mornings, cycling to work, sitting outside the brown cafes on a weekday afternoon.
The Nine Streets area, just to the east of the Jordaan, is where we usually go for coffee and browsing. Nine streets crossing the three main canals, each one lined with vintage stores, small design shops, bookshops and bakeries. It takes about two hours to walk properly if you stop in a few places, and you almost certainly will. Start with a pastry at one of the bakeries, pick a direction and walk. You don't need a plan.
This is also one of the best neighborhoods to stay in if you're visiting for more than two days and want to feel like less of a tourist. It's quieter at night than the canal ring, the restaurants are better and more local, and you're still within walking distance of everything in the center.
Vondelpark
Vondelpark is where we end up when we need to slow down, and it's where Rex gets his proper walk of the day. Amsterdam's biggest park is dog-friendly, well-kept and genuinely lovely. Wide paths, ponds, shady spots and open grassy areas where you can sit for as long as you want without anyone asking you to move on. In the summer it fills up with picnics, cyclists, people reading and groups sitting around portable speakers. In autumn the trees turn gold and it becomes one of the most beautiful places in the city.
We almost always stop at one of the park cafes for a drink when the weather cooperates. The Vondelpark3 cafe has outdoor seating overlooking one of the ponds and is a good place to sit for an hour and do nothing in particular. If you're bringing a dog, leashes are required in most sections but the park is big enough that it never feels restrictive. Early mornings before the crowds arrive are the best time to go with a dog. The paths are quiet, the light is good and you can take your time.
Vondelpark is also a useful landmark for orienting yourself. The Rijksmuseum and the Museum Quarter are right next to it on the east side, which makes it easy to combine a museum morning with a park afternoon. The Overtoom and Vondelstraat around the park edges have good independent cafes and restaurants if you want to eat nearby.
Anne Frank House
This one is harder to describe than the others. Walking through the rooms where Anne Frank and her family hid during the war is an experience that stays with you long after you leave. The hidden annex behind the bookcase, the rooms where eight people lived in secrecy for over two years, the windows they couldn't look out of, the marks on the wall where Otto Frank tracked his daughters' heights. The exhibits are simple and do not overexplain. They don't need to.
Seeing Anne's actual diary in a glass case in person makes the history feel immediate in a way that reading it doesn't. It's a small notebook. The handwriting is a teenager's handwriting. Standing in front of it in the building where she actually lived and wrote feels completely different from anything you can get from a book or a film, and the museum knows this and builds the experience around it.
We visited for the first time on a Kings Day trip from Italy, back when we still lived there. We listened to the book on the long drive up, the whole thing, spread across the hours on the road. Dylan was quiet going into the house and quieter coming out. I think the book prepared us for the story but nothing quite prepares you for the rooms themselves. There's something about standing in the actual space that the written word can't replicate. He didn't say much afterward but he didn't need to. Some places just land differently in person.
Tickets open six weeks in advance on the official website and sell out extremely fast, particularly in spring and summer. Book as soon as your dates are fixed. Do not leave it to the week before. The tour is timed entry and you cannot buy tickets at the door.
Albert Cuyp Market
The Albert Cuyp Market in De Pijp is one of the longest street markets in Europe and well worth a walk through if you're in the neighborhood. It runs for about a kilometer along the Albert Cuypstraat with food stalls, produce stands, clothing vendors, flowers and all the random miscellaneous things that make a good street market worth wandering through. It operates Monday through Saturday and gets genuinely crowded on weekend afternoons, but that's part of the atmosphere.
The food is the main reason to go. Fresh stroopwafels made in front of you with the warm caramel still soft inside are the obvious highlight and absolutely worth the queue. Poffertjes, the small Dutch pancakes dusted with icing sugar, are another. And then there's the herring sandwich, which is a true Amsterdam experience that Lisa handles much more confidently than I do. The vendor holds the raw herring by the tail and you eat it whole, traditionally with diced onion and pickles. Lisa orders it every time. I watch.
The De Pijp neighborhood around the market is worth exploring after. It's one of the most diverse and food-forward neighborhoods in Amsterdam, with Indonesian and Surinamese restaurants alongside wine bars and specialty coffee shops. Spend an afternoon here and you'll eat well.
Foodhallen
We like Foodhallen. We know not everyone does. There are blogs that call it a tourist trap and we understand the argument, but our experience has been consistently good and we go back every single visit. It was actually the first Foodhallen we ever visited, before we knew it was a whole concept across the Netherlands, and we've been to every one we've found since then. Rotterdam has one. Hilversum has one. They're all good but Amsterdam was the original for us.
It's an indoor food market in a converted tram depot in Amsterdam West, with stalls covering everything from dim sum and tacos to bitterballen and proper burgers. There's a full bar running down one side, plenty of communal seating and enough variety that it works well for groups where everyone wants something different. The building has a good energy, especially in the evenings when the bar fills up and it gets louder and more social.
Go for lunch if you're in the neighborhood during the day. Go earlier in the evening if you're starting a night out. It gets full on weekend evenings and the seating gets competitive, but we've always managed to find a spot. Hotel De Hallen is right next door if you want to stay in this part of the city. It's a genuinely good choice and puts you in a local Amsterdam West neighborhood rather than the tourist center.
NDSM Wharf
This is the Amsterdam that most visitors never see, and that's exactly why we like it. Take the free ferry from the dock on the west side of Central Station and in about 15 minutes you arrive at NDSM Wharf, a former shipbuilding yard in Noord that has become one of the most interesting creative spaces in Europe. The scale of it hits you first. The old industrial buildings are enormous and covered floor to ceiling in street art. There are artist studios, independent galleries, a skate park, a flea market on weekends and open spaces where nothing in particular is happening but it all feels alive.
If you're visiting with kids, NDSM is also home to Wondr, an immersive experience venue that currently runs both a Barbie experience and a SpongeBob experience. We've done both and would recommend them without hesitation. They're the kind of thing that sounds gimmicky until you're actually inside and having a genuinely great time. The Barbie experience in particular was far better than we expected. It's the kind of activity that works for kids and adults equally, which is rare enough to be worth pointing out.
The IJver brewery is worth the trip on its own even if Wondr isn't on your agenda. It sits right on the waterfront with outdoor seating overlooking the IJ and the Amsterdam skyline on the other side. The craft beers are excellent, the food is good and on a sunny afternoon it's one of the nicest places in the city to sit for a while. We've spent hours here without noticing the time passing.
NDSM is also where the Amsterdam Dance Event sets up some of its biggest warehouse venues in October, if that's on your radar. The energy of the place during ADE is something else entirely. But even on a quiet Tuesday in November it's worth the ferry crossing for the brewery and the walk around the wharf. Give yourself at least two hours, more if you're doing Wondr.
A'DAM Lookout
The A'DAM Lookout is across the IJ from Central Station, reachable on the same free ferry line as NDSM but a much shorter crossing. Two minutes and you're there. The tower sits at the base of Amsterdam Noord and has one of the best views of the city from the observation deck at the top, looking back across the water to the historic center with the canal ring spreading out behind it.
There's a rooftop swing that extends over the edge of the building, which is either thrilling or completely unnecessary depending on your perspective. We have strong feelings about this swing. The first time we went, we stood in line for about 25 minutes. We were next. The swing suddenly stopped working. The group ahead of us was left dangling over the edge while maintenance figured it out. We watched this for a few minutes, made a collective decision and went to the bar instead.
The bar is genuinely good. The views from a bar stool looking out over Amsterdam are identical to the views from the swing, except you're holding a drink and standing on solid ground. We've been back to A'DAM Lookout since then and the swing was working fine. We still went to the bar. Some decisions you just don't revisit.
One Thing We'd Debate: The Heineken Experience
We'll be honest about this one because it's on almost every Amsterdam list and we think it's worth a reality check. The Heineken Experience is a paid tour of the historic Heineken brewery on the Stadhouderskade, and it gets recommended constantly as a must-do. We've done brewery tours in a lot of cities across Europe and the US, and some of them are genuinely excellent: personal, interesting, with real access to the brewing process and people who are actually passionate about what they're making.
The Heineken Experience is not that. It's expensive for what it is, it feels like a very polished piece of mass tourism rather than a real brewery experience and the actual brewing hasn't happened at this site since 1988. The building is impressive and the brand history is interesting, but if you're choosing between this and spending two hours at the IJver brewery at NDSM with a view of the harbor and genuinely good craft beer, we'd send you to NDSM every time.
That said, if you're visiting with people who are enthusiastic about it, it's not a disaster. It's just not how we'd spend an afternoon in Amsterdam. Make your own call, but go in knowing what it is.
Know Before You Go
Getting there: Amsterdam Centraal is well connected by train from most of Europe. Schiphol Airport has direct flights from across the US and the rest of the world. From Eindhoven the train takes 45 minutes. From Brussels it's under two hours. From London via Eurostar it's just over four hours. The train from Centraal puts you in the center of the city immediately with no transfer needed.
Getting around: Walk, cycle or tram for almost everything. A car is a genuine disadvantage in the city center and parking is expensive and difficult. Bike rentals are everywhere and most locals use them. If you're confident on a bike it's the best way to move around the city and lets you cover a lot of ground quickly. If you're less confident, the tram network is excellent and covers everything you need. The GVB app handles tram tickets and is easy to use.
Best time to visit: April and May for tulips and the best light on the canals. September and October for fewer crowds and beautiful autumn color in the Jordaan and Vondelpark. July and August are warm but very busy on weekends. December has good Christmas markets and a moody, beautiful canal atmosphere if you don't mind the cold and the dark afternoons.
Dog friendly: Amsterdam is genuinely good for dogs. Vondelpark, the Jordaan and most outdoor markets are relaxed about well-behaved dogs on a leash. Restaurants with outdoor seating usually welcome dogs. The canal tours we recommend are fine with dogs too. Check our dog-friendly travel section for more specific guidance.
Book ahead: Anne Frank House and Van Gogh Museum sell out weeks ahead in high season. Book as soon as your dates are confirmed. The Rijksmuseum is slightly easier to get into but still worth booking online to avoid queuing. Canal tours can usually be booked a day or two out but the small group options fill up faster than you'd expect in summer.
How many days: Three full days gives you time to do the main museums, a canal tour, the Jordaan and a half day in Noord without feeling rushed. Four days lets you breathe and follow your nose a bit more. If you only have two days, pick two or three things you really want to do and walk everywhere else. Amsterdam rewards slow wandering.
More Amsterdam from The getAwayZ
If you're still planning your trip, these two are worth reading next:
Where to Stay in Amsterdam: our picks across every budget and neighborhood, from canal-ring luxury to a converted harbor crane in Noord.
Fall in Amsterdam: Bikes, Canals, Still Busy But Better: why autumn is our favorite time to visit and what changes when the summer crowds clear out.
