I’m going on vacation in a couple weeks to Berlin and Amsterdam, flying to Berlin on August 12, leaving from Amsterdam on August 27, and transitioning between the two sometime in between. Things Emily and I should see or do? Care to meet up? On vacations my evenings tend to be underscheduled.
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There are obviously lots of places to see in and around Berlin and it’s hard to give good advice on what you should absolutely see because I don’t know what you two fancy. Certainly Berlin has lots of great museums and art galleries, not to mention architecture from pretty much all eras.
But, if you’re up for it, why not come to Dresden for a day! This is where I live and I’d be happy to show you around! It’s a 2 hour train or car ride from Berlin, which makes it a perfect a day trip. And if you have yet another day to spend, it’s just another 2 hours to Prague from here.
Hey Ian,
Would be great to meet up. on the way between Berlin-Amsterdam you are basically coming close to where i am living currently (city of Hildesheim). You two could certainly stop by for a day or so, i can easily arrange a a room for you so it maybe serves for a bit of a break, house is this: http://trillke.net/images/HomePagePicture.jpg. Or we just meet up in Hannover, have some lunch there. The Berlin-Amsterdam train usually passes Hannover.
I also recommend going to Dresden – it’s a beautiful and relaxed town to visit.
cheers, Holger
Definitely rent bycicles in Amsterdam. It’s the best way to experience the city, which is one of the easiest to navigate on human-powered wheels. There used to be a cycle rental/repair business in the basement of the old Stock Exchange (which is a building worth a visit in itself, by Berlage one of the great European architects of the last century), right in front of the main station walking towards the centre of town, after the bridge.
And try to find the time to read a bit on Amsterdam’s peculiar architecture, especially the oldest houses in the red lights quarter. They had peculiar constraints, and developed a beautiful, practical architectural style in response to them.
Then the usual stuff: the Rijksmuseum, van Gogh museum, a stroll in Vondelpark, etc.
Ian –
Brasserie Harkema – http://www.brasserieharkema.nl/ – Trendy, expensive, but actually quite good. You’ll need a reservation, and yeah I’ll say it again it’s expensive. However, I liked that my wife and I were some of the only American’s in the place.
My wife and I took a canal tour with these guys (http://www.amsterdamboatclub.com/). It’s not your run of the mill canal tour (zillions of tourists in a huge boat). You’re in an open air boat with a small number of people. You can bring food, drink and smoke. Not only can you go places the big boats can’t but you get to meet cool people. Captain Rod was our Captain, he’s great.
A tip on the Anne Frank House – go toward the end of the day if your schedule permits. The mornings and afternoons are packed, but at the tail end of the day you can go through it at your own pace and not have to deal with heavy lines. Another food note – the Pancake Bakery is touristy but a nice place to eat afterwards (http://www.pancake.nl).
One more – http://www.pregorestaurant.nl/ – this was out of the way and incredibly tiny in the Jordaan, but amazing.
“On vacations my evenings tend to be underscheduled.”
Uh, thats the point! ;)
In Berlin, you might want to see the c-base, the stranded space station….
If you haven’t booked your lodgings yet for Amsterdam, consider staying a 5-minute train ride outside of Amsterdam in Haarlem. The Haarlem city square is quite nice (I really enjoyed the afternoon in the square downing a wit bier), and its a bit quieter at night than Amsterdam so you can be well rested for the busy days. It’s quite a bit cheaper as well, so you get a lot nicer place for the same price as you would pay in Amsterdam, without the noisy drugged up tourists (Or do you plan on being one of them? :).
There’s two different sex museums in Amsterdam, my wife and I found both of them rather entertaining. If you have a Rick Steves book for the Netherlands, its full of good downtown walks that take you through some historic and interesting parts of town. Also make sure to go on a canal ride.
I was tempted to rent bicycles as ludo suggested, but after seeing the rather death defying ways they wove through traffic decided it’d be a bit less stress to just walk, or take the street car around.
Just cause you’re in Amsterdam, doesn’t mean you have to spend your day’s there, there’s lots of interesting towns within a 30 min train ride away.
yeah cbase, but that is virtual… visit the real ufo, http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/137393339_16899c050a.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/temp/137393339/&h=500&w=465&sz=253&hl=en&start=1&sig2=Vmc91EkSn8mZKc2Q4mKgxg&um=1&tbnid=Mxzfw6JL1KybKM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=121&ei=HtSOSMeLMZmi7QWd3PXABw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnalepastr%2Bberlin%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN accessible from nalepastr. there’s a club right next to it.
~f.
You might want to check out the crashed space station c-base: https://c-base.org/ (cacert signed certificate). We do lots of different things from playing games, producing movies, to setting up city-wide free wireless networks; from random BBQ sessions to hosting “events” such as Pypy Sprint or Maemo Summit 2008.
contact [email protected] if you want more information :-)
If you want to taste some good local beer in Amsterdam, visit “Brouwerij ‘t IJ” (http://www.brouwerijhetij.nl/). They close at 8pm (it’s not a pub) so be there in time. Be warned, too much “columbus” will kill you :)
If you want a great comedy show in English + dinner, Boom Chicago is located in the center of Amsterdam: http://www.boomchicago.nl/en/
In Amsterdam, the popular musuems are all well worth a visit and unique to Amsterdam: the Anne Frank house, the Van Gogh museum, and the Rijksmuseum.
Make a point of trying Indonesian food at least once: rijstaffel is delicious, distinctive, and very very rare in the USA. Unfortunately I have forgotten the names of all the restaurants we ate at, but everything we tried was good.
We stayed at the Estherea, which has a great lobby and a great location (easy to get everywhere on foot but still quiet at night), and a very nice staff, but rooms are quite small and quite expensive.
Berlin and the Netherlands? If you have the time, drop by in Hanover – the central railway station is in the city center, near some spots worth sightseeing: The “Altstadt” (picturesque Old Town), “Altes Rathaus” (city hall, a very popular motif in camera tests), “Sprengelmuseum” (museum of arts) as well as the highly controversial works of Niki de Saint Phalle. Drop me a line if you need a guide to the city.
In Berlin, you might want to see the c-base, the stranded space station….
We travelled there with our three daughters. We found all informations on amsterdam.info. Amsterdam it is a very beautiful town and the museums are great. But with the exchange rate as it is, we found it very expensive. Some museums were closed for refurbishment, but the views of the canals and hi-lights such as the Anne Frank House and the Artis Zoo (an old-fashioned place with a great array of animals kept in somewhat cramped conditions) are very memorable. The food is awful unless you want to spend a great deal of money and there is a cynical attitude to tourists that is very out of date (e.g. tapas marinaded pork was one slice of fried bacon on 1/2 a bread roll). We stayed in the serviceable but expensive Singel Hotel which was okay but its close proximity to a red light area made going out with the children awkward and there really was nothing charming or liberated about hurrying past the ladies in the windows. The same is true of the legal dope selling ‘coffee houses’. The whole bicycle thing is interesting. It is almost, but not quite, the eco-city of the future. Some cyclists are quite anarchic and we spent a fair bit of time dodging pavement mounted bad-tempered riders. Overall verdict was we were glad we’d been but wouldn’t go again as it feels over priced, out of date and sleazy – not the cutting edge hip family friendly town it’s sold as.