Our Trip to Amsterdam

Our four days in Amsterdam were just lovely! It was so nice to be away on holiday, forgetting about all the mundane stuff back home and spending time exploring the area and seeing all the sights. I had nearly forgotten what it feels like to be on holiday, the excitement and adrenaline you're on just from being in a new place and exploring all it has to offer. A change of scenery does amazing things, changes your outlook and makes everything much clearer doesn't it. I most definitely have the travel bug again. It was just me and my two year old son for a couple of days and then over the weekend a couple of friends joined us. It was a lovely combination of spending some quality time with my boy then chilling and catching up with friends as I hadn't seen them in a couple of months. Amsterdam is a great city to visit especially with kids and I'll write about that in a separate post. I'll also write about some of the attractions we visited in more detail as there is a lot to say/write about most of them plus I took a million photos. For now though I wanted to share some of our highlights.

Our Amsterdam Highlights

The excitement of being at the airport and on the the plane! My son was so excited looking out the window on the plane. He kept saying 'Look Mummy, look!'

Seeing tulips in bloom all around the city of Amsterdam. 

Visiting the Artis Royal Zoo and introducing elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions, gorillas, seals and many more animals to my son for the first time. Of course, he knew what they all were already from his books but it was amazing getting so close to them. The giraffes were just inches from us!

Exploring the beautiful Vondelpark and finding a fantastic kids playground and seeing wild parakeets everywhere.

Walking through the lovely serene streets in the Jordaan, a quiet relief from the city centre. 

Finding a playground combined with a rabbit/chicken run in the Jordaan.

By chance finding a fantastic pizza restaurant for dinner with a play area at the back!

  

and finding the most delicious take away pizza!

 

Visiting the Van Gogh Museum and timing it perfectly with Pip's nap.

Finding the perfect place for lunch! My friend Sara spotted this little boat cafe and we had coffee and delicious apple pie with this view!

We had such a lovely few days with these photos caputuring our highlights. It's so nice looking back at these photos, I need to print some out. Not everything went to plan though. There was a problem with the hotel we had booked in that they gave us a basement room and not one as advertised when I made the booking (don't stay in Hotel Rokin). It was a stressful moment but luckily I found another hotel which ended up being in a much nicer location near Vondelpark and it was a lot cheaper too! The other thing that I was worried about was my son being sick on the plane. Well he was on both flights! It wasn't very nice for him and he tends to panic and cling onto me when he's sick so it always goes over me too. I had a sick bag and loads of wet wipes on hand each time and it was fine. Even my little two year old was making a joke about being sick. He kept saying 'I was sick on the landing again Mummy!'

I wanted to mention these things as sometimes things don't go to plan but that's part of life and especially travelling. These things didn't hold us back though and we enjoyed ourselves for the rest of the stay. I thought it might be difficult travelling solo with a young child but as people said before I went, it's really not much different from being at home. You do need to be organized and on the ball a lot of the time but it doesn't have to be some military operation. For me snacks on hand and knowing where the nearest playground/park was were my essentials. I didn't have a set itinerary for each day and it was raining on and off while we were there so I planned the museums trips around the rain. Friends arrived on sunny Saturday so we used that opportunity to stroll around the Jordaan area & have lunch on the boat. Amsterdam is a wonderful city to explore, and although we managed to see many of the main attractions there is still so much we didn't get to see and do and I would love to return one day soon. It's a great city for kids as well as adults, so if you're thinking about going I'd definitely recommend it!

I'm linking this up to my travel linky #MyFavouriteTrip and this will also count towards my #take12trips challenge and my first holiday abroad this year, yay! Thank you to the tourism city office for providing us with a I amsterdam City Card.

Have you been to Amsterdam? What was your experience? Would love to hear your thoughts ☺