Happy Amsterversary! Pre-trippie

[Gill H]

Goededag everyone, and welcome to our latest trippie. We are Peter H and Gill H, and you may have read some of our previous accounts of trips to WDW, DLP and various places in Europe.

The history of this trip is a rather strange one! It’s our 20th wedding anniversary on 17th June, and as you may know, 20 years is traditionally a china anniversary. Well, we don’t really want any china, and we certainly can’t afford to go to China! So we’re planning on spending the evening at our lovely local Chinese restaurant. Which is nice – but we wanted to do a little more to celebrate.

Now, back in March we had a wonderful 5 days at the gorgeous Disneyland Hotel in DLP (thanks to a 2 night free offer and a little help from the PPI Fairy!) It was Peter’s birthday while we were there, and we also set aside a day to celebrate our anniversary, with a special meal to end the day. It was a gloriously romantic trip, not least because Peter had bought me a beautiful pendant, which he arranged for Mickey to present to me!

You might think that was celebration enough. But hey, if you have read any of our trippies you know we love to celebrate things as much as possible. So there’s more…

When we were booking transport for the DLP trip, we had planned to use Avios (formerly airmiles) to book our Eurostar tickets. However, when it came to it, the bizarre way they allocate tickets meant that we would have to pay a total of £140 as well as 18,000 Avios, or risk waiting till nearer the time when Eurostar allocated more Avios places (usually Avios are supposed to cover the entire cost of Eurostar tickets, whereas with planes you still have to pay the taxes). Well, knowing that Eurostar tickets can rocket in price in a heartbeat, and not wanting to risk waiting, we booked normal tickets through Eurostar at £69 return. Which meant we had some Avios left over and no idea what to do with them.

We played around with various ideas on the site, but many places within our Avios allowance only had rubbish flight times (fly out late Saturday afternoon and home Sunday morning anyone? Err, no thanks.) Eventually we figured out that if we both took off the Friday after our anniversary, we could get decent timed flights for a long weekend in Amsterdam. So that’s what we booked, at a cost of 9,000 Avios and £35 each.

Next we needed to find a hotel. Of course, the Dibb was our first resource, and we noticed several recommendations for a hotel called Misc Eatdrinksleep. It looked central, and the reviews, even on the notoriously picky Tripadvisor, didn’t have a bad word to say about the place. Only one problem – we didn’t have quite enough saved up to book it, and since it’s a very small hotel, we needed to book soon. Cue a quick chat with the parents and a casual enquiry as to what they might be thinking of buying us as a 20th anniversary present …? Result – the following day we were able to book the hotel. Thanks Mum & Dad, great present!

As for planning, we’ve done the usual – got a book out of the library, read some websites, checked out YouTube for videos (note to self: next time, search for ‘Amsterdam holiday’ rather than ‘Amsterdam trip’ – some of those videos weren’t quite what I was expecting!)

One slight disappointment is that by the time we went to book tickets for the Anne Frank House, they were already sold out, and since we don’t fancy a 2-hour queue, we probably won’t go. But there are plenty of other things we can do.

We’re buying ourselves 3-day ‘iAmsterdam’ cards. These will cover all our transport (apart from between the airport and hotel), entry to many museums and attractions, a canal cruise, and discounts at various places. This trip won’t have a big budget, so it will be useful to have these paid for in advance.

Our flight leaves Heathrow at 6pm on Thursday and gets in at 8.10 pm local time, so rather than try to figure out the intricacies of local transport, we’ve booked a taxi through the hotel.

We haven’t set ourselves a rigid plan, but there are some things we’d like to fit in:

Van Gogh museum, possibly Rembrandt House also
Our Lord in the Attic – a ‘hidden’ Roman Catholic church
Vondelpark – looks a nice park to explore
Floating flower market
Canal cruise – just not sure which one to choose!
Diamond museum

And of course it wouldn’t be a Peter and Gill H trip without trying some of the local food!

Holland has historical links with Indonesia, its former colony, so there is a great tradition of Indonesian food. This is new to us and we don’t like things too spicy, but we have been encouraged to try a ‘rice table’, which is a meal consisting of rice and lots of small dishes to try. We’ve decided to book Indrapura, which looks really nice.

We also want to try traditional Dutch food, which seems to be unpretentious and hearty. We plan to visit Happ-Hmm (which translates as ‘Yummy Bite’) which seems to be very small, down to earth and also promises a hearty meal at a budget price!

Naturally we want to partake of a pancake, and are planning to go to the Pancake House (not least because we get a discount with our ‘iAmsterdam’ card). It looks a great place to try and has an impressive range of filled pancakes.

Thanks to the 'iAmsterdam' website, we've also found a service that will collect our luggage from our hotel when we leave, and take it to the airport for us to collect - all for 17.50 Euros. Great service!

So, that’s about it. All that remains is to teach ourselves a few basic Dutch expressions (I’m sure everyone in Amsterdam will speak superb English, but we like to try out a little of the local lingo whenever we go abroad).

So, here’s to a happy Amsterversary!

>>>Day 1

INDEX

[Peter H]

Can't wait to go

[Alyson]

Sounds like it's going to be a great anniversary trip . Not long now

[Guest]

Is it the Pancake Bakery you are going to on Prinzsegracht? If so, you are in for a treat, if you are feeling hungry try one of their French onion soup bowls first, omg, delicious. Smakelijk eten!

Diane x

[Gill H]

Yes it's that one - thanks, we'll remember that!

[P&S]

We loved Amsterdam and yes you are right Gill everyone speaks excellent english!

We got the train from the airport, no problems or hassle and very quickly into city centre, our hotel was only a 10 minute walk then

We did venture into The Red Light District at night and the atmosphere was actually quite good and the bars a reasonable price, good people watching

Canal cruise is great but it's a very walkable city and we walked for miles

There is a great museum about the Dutch People.

Have a superb trip

[Gill H]

All packed, off this afternoon! This is going round my head...

[shirley]

Have a good weekend xx

[Gill H]

We have arrived! Hotel is fab, we are in the Wonders room. Think Aladdin - Arabian theming with a big red and gold canopy over the bed.

[Cazzius]

Very late to this but I love Amsterdam and am looking forward to reading more.

Love that picture of you and Mickey.

Your hotel in Amsterdam sounds wonderful and your sightseeing plan hits all the top sights!