Our score: 4 stars
Tripping with and for Food:
I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like to travel. Well, what is life if you don’t live it.
We have been planning for this trip for a few years, once we even booked the tickets, but couldn’t go. 🙁
I was, and am always, excited about roaming around the planet. And more than anything else, I love the planning part of it, not that I do so much planning in everyday life (otherwise my achievements would have been countless but well that’s not the case !)
We knew we wanted to go to the whole of Europe, but we couldn’t do everything at one go, so we have split our trips in thousands of small trips. The first one included Amsterdam, Paris and Switzerland. My work needs me to take compliance leave for 2 working weeks, so we combined 3 weekends and went for a reasonable 17 days covering these 3 places.
My research always starts with hunting around Local places, Local cuisines and Local flavors. And we prefer to live around the city central, giving us easy access to food and public transport. The hotels / apartments here would be a little more expensive as compared to the outskirts, but we know our priorities so we don’t mind shelling out a little more and staying close to the center.
Red Alert for Asians:
- A hotel room of the size 12sqm is considered to be a luxury in Europe, so please do not be disappointed if there is not enough space to walk around in your room. But who wants to be in the hotel room anyways !! so go for the cheapest hotel and do not select ‘With breakfast’ as you would like to try on all the cafes and joints around.
- Do not take taxis, otherwise your pocket will be shrunk by end of the trip.
- Buy Regional Pass for Amsterdam, which will allow you to take buses, trains, trams, ferries, metros…..Man ! This is one city where the types of public transports are exhaustive.
- Start your day early, the city wakes up early and there is so much to see, you don’t want to miss any of it. we traded our sleep for all the experiences.
We selected a few restaurants and made the necessary bookings. See I did not book for the Museums but restaurants YES !!
3 days in Amsterdam !
Though 3 days are never enough to see this marvelous land, spend as many days as possible. I will tell you what we did.
Day 1: we had already booked our Regional pass, you could do it online else buy it from the airport ! The pass gets activated upon first use and is valid for the no of days you have selected for. Remember it’s valid for those many calendar days.
Van Gogh Museum:
We started with the world renowned artist Van Gogh’s Museum, who is famous for his paintings of peasants. Art did not just happen to him, he made it happen. You can see his journey through his paintings, it was a Time Travel for me. So well articulated, detailed yet simple. It was not an imagination, it was the hard truth of life, their lives. Even if you do not know about him, I would strongly recommend to visit, you will not regret it.
Lunch at Avocado Show:
I am always hungry, immediately after this, we went for our Lunch which was booked at The Avocado show…..a mere 15 mins walk from the museum. If you are an Avocado lover, or if you are not, you have to visit this place for its innovation, check out their Insta page, they are quite active. They make everything your mind can imagine with avocados. God how many avocados are grown in the whole wide world. We ordered for the Toast and the Fries.
Tried Dishes: Avocado Toast with Vegetables, Avocado fries.
Pocket Load: EUR 20-25 per person
