I have visited Amsterdam a few times now for a variety of reasons, the first time being to row in a race on the Amstel River in my 20s. The boat crew stayed in a cheap hostel room complete with mice, and the dorm room was burgled as we slept. To be honest, it was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Subsequent visits have been much more positive, especially our trip to Amsterdam with teenagers.
Amsterdam is not just a party city and playground for adults, it also makes a fabulous city break with your kids. We visited Amsterdam with teenagers when our children were aged 11, 13 and 18. We were keen to explore the city, but in an organised way, so I put together a busy itinerary for the trip to Amsterdam. Here are some of the activities which worked well with the teenagers.
Amsterdam makes an excellent city break with teenagers, offering a mix of canal boat tours, free ferries to North Amsterdam for the trendy Pllek container café/beach and massive STRAAT street art museum, the thrilling Lookout Swing at A’DAM Tower, and accessible art at the Van Gogh Museum and Moco Museum (with Banksy exhibits).
The guide highlights family-friendly planning (avoiding the Red Light District), shopping on Kalverstraat, the Houseboat Museum in Jordaan, fun dining at Sea Palace or Foodhallen, and easy day trips like the Alkmaar Cheese Market and Zaanse Schans windmills, proving the city has plenty of engaging activities beyond its adult reputation.
Amsterdam is a truly beautiful city but there may be certain areas that you don’t want to wander into with your children. As we felt that two of our children were too young for any ‘eye opening window shopping’, we were keen to stay clear of the Red Light District on this trip. However, as this area of the City is relatively contained, then we were able to plan around it and avoid any unwanted surprises.
We did have to deal with the “What’s that smell?” question in relation to smoking weed but as that issue is no longer limited to the Netherlands, it was not such a big deal.
Canals, street art, a giant swing, good food and a bit of shopping. Plenty to keep teenagers interested and grown-ups smiling.
Our teenagers enjoyed moving around the city by different modes of transport, particularly those that we don’t have at home: the double decker train from Schipol Airport to the centre, trams to the suburbs and bakfiets (Dutch bikes with boxes on the front). However it was being on the water which the kids enjoyed the most.
Perhaps the best introduction to this special city is to pick up an Amsterdam canal boat tour with one of the many tour operators.
Either book a tour from one of the outlets along the river when you get there (but be prepared to wait for an available time-slot), or pre-book a tour using a site such as Get Your Guide.
If your Amsterdam canal boat tour starts in the Damrak, whilst you wait to embark your boat, look across the water to the row of houses straight ahead of you – they are leaning and full of character so known as ‘dancing houses’.
We picked up an Amsterdam canal boat tour further around the canals with Reederij P Kooip, a family business for over 100 years. They have several pickup points along the canals and their fleet of electric boats are very clean and with good commentary. They also offer candlelit cruises if that timing works better for you.
When on your Amsterdam canal boat tour, sit back, rest your feet and admire the wonderful buildings – look for more ‘dancing houses’, stepped gables, or large hooks on the top of houses used to hoist furniture to top floors. You will also pick up lots of interesting facts from the boat commentary, such as, why the Dutch use the expression “as expensive as pepper”.
Having issued a note of caution about the dangers of bicycles in Amsterdam in a related blog, getting on a bike can however be one of the best ways to explore the City, but I would suggest booking a tour with a guide.
If you can’t beat them, then join them!
On a good weather day, take the free public ferry from the back of Centraal Station across the water to the NSDM area in North Amsterdam (15 mins on the ferry) and have a drink at Pllek, the café made of containers on the waterfront with a man-made beach. Pllek sits alongside the novel ‘crane hotel’ and several huge warehouses where the Holland Line ship liners were once made. Now the warehouses are used by artists as work and urban display space.
Whilst in the NSDM area, pop into STRAAT, the World’s largest museum of street art, to explore life-sized pieces from some of the best graffiti artists from all over the world. The pieces of art at the museum and surrounding warehouse buildings are continually changing, making it good for return visits.
Take another free ferry from the back of Centraal Station directly across the water to the A’DAM Hotel (it only takes about 5 minutes). At the top of the A’DAM Hotel is the Lookout Swing, so called because you swing out over the edge of the hotel on an electric arm – not for the faint hearted!
It’s advisable to book the Lookout Swing in advance as time-slots can sell out. After surviving that experience, we picked up some burgers from the restaurant in the basement of the hotel which also had an air-hockey table so the teenagers were occupied whilst we were waiting.
There are many excellent museums in Amsterdam and so you will be spoilt for choice. However, if you are only in Amsterdam on a short trip then you may not wish to spend a lot of time inside a museum. For that reason, on a short trip to Amsterdam, I would choose the Van Gogh Museum over the Rijksmuseum and save the Rijksmuseum for a longer stay.
The Van Gogh Museum is a manageable size and well set-out, meaning it can slot nicely into your itinerary. Similarly, the Anne Frank House is good to visit if you are only on a short trip to Amsterdam. Whichever you choose, as mentioned in my blog Travel Planning a Trip to Amsterdam (the Basics), make sure that you book your tickets in advance to get the time-slots that you want and don’t miss out.
Our teenagers found the Van Gogh Museum very accessible and not too dry – they recognised, and liked, a lot of the more famous paintings, such as the Sunflowers series. It’s also not too large and so can easily be fit into your itinerary.
Next door to the Van Gogh Museum in Museumplein is the Moco Museum which definitely has the ‘cool factor’ for your teens. It offers a permanent Banksy exhibition, along with an art by other modern artists such as Warhol, Basquiat and Haring. The Moco also offers great Digital and Immersive exhibits which offer opportunities for your kids social media snaps.
Visit the Bloemenmarkt, the World’s only floating flower market which started here in 1862. Browse the numerous floating greenhouses on the Singel Canal and pick up some souvenirs or bulbs for your garden.
It’s usually open from 9.00am until 5.30pm on Mondays to Saturdays, and from 11.00am until 5.30pm on a Sunday. Try to visit early if you can as it does get busy once the tourists wake up.
For more street art, book a walking tour of the open-air Street Art Museum Amsterdam in the Niuew West neighbourhood. This involves taking a tram journey out to the suburbs and experiencing a more gritty area of the city. Our guide was very good and we learnt a lot about key graffiti terms, such as stencilling and tagging, as well as offering some superb photography opportunities. This trip sets you up well for a visit to the Banksy exhibition at Moco.
As well as wandering around the beautiful Jordaan neighbourhood and taking gazillions of photographs, the kids wanted to see inside a houseboat and so we visited the Houseboat Museum which is parked up on one of the canals in the Jordaan neighbourhood. This does not need a lot of time as the Houseboat Museum is very small but it was lovely to see a houseboat from the inside and imagine what it might be like to live a simple life on the water.
Beside The Houseboat Museum, Jordaan neighborhood to explore on foot. It’s small area of streets sandwiched between two canals at the northeastern end of the Canal Zone. You can easily lose a couple of hours just wandering around the Jordaan neighbourhood and weaving between the dreamy canals over bridges bedeck with bikes.
This area summed up the image I had in my head of Amsterdam – every bridge provided another photo opportunity (much to the annoyance of my husband who commented “all I could hear was clicking from you and the kids”).
One area of the Jordaan neighbourhood is called The 9 Streets (De 9 Straatjes) comprised of cobbled streets with inviting boutique shops and coffee bars. It’s super pretty but quite an expensive area of town – lovely to wander around, grab a coffee and soak in the sights and sounds. Look out for the streets named after animals which were once hunted for their pelts in or near the City (e.g. wolf and bear).
While the following places are less ‘cool’, they are still great places for your teenagers to understand the city of Amsterdam. Our kids found the following locations to be greatly interesting & they were snapping pictures left right and centre!
If you have teenagers into drama or the arts, the Tuschinski Theatre was built in 1919 in Art Deco and Amsterdam School style architecture. It has a very rich history which you can learn about on a morning tour of the theatre. Again, pre-book the Tuschinski theatre tour to avoid disappointment.
If you miss the tour, but you love cinema and/or Art Deco architecture, then you can satisfy yourself with a quick look inside the stunning foyer. Alternatively, in the afternoons the Tuschinski Theatre operates as a Pathé cinema, so you can enjoy a film in luxurious old-fashioned surroundings.
The Begijnhof is a surprising haven of tranquillity just off the bustling shopping street of Kalverstraat. It is a quadrant of 168 small houses set around a green square; the houses were built for the Beguine in the 14th century – the Beguine were women who (unlike nuns) did not belong to a religious order but who dedicated their lives to helping those in need.
The oldest house in Amsterdam (Het Houten Huis) is here and dates to 1420. The Beguine secretly built a Catholic church within the quadrant during the Protestant Reformation, which still exists, along with a Protestant church. There are still some residents in the Begijnhof and so you need to be quiet as you wander around. The Begijnhof is free to enter.
Visit the Our Lord in the Attic Museum and enjoy a visit to a well-preserved canal house dating back to the 17th century in the centre of Amsterdam. Get to see what a Dutch canal house looks like behind the doors, with narrow corridors and steep stairs.
But be prepared for a surprise in the attic – a complete church! The church was commissioned by a wealthy Catholic businessman who wanted to practice the Catholic faith at a time when this was forbidden in public in the Netherlands.
Head to the Sea Palace Chinese Restaurant, the largest floating restaurant in Europe and an Amsterdam institution, located near Centraal Station.
If your teens are after something a little more ‘instagramable’, you should try out the TonTon Club, which is an arcade club where teens are welcome to play on the many old-school and modern games. The menu is Asian inspired, including bao, dumplings, noodles, Korean fried chicken, as well as milkshakes and cocktails/beers for yourself.
Alternatively, grab a fun supper at the trendy Foodhallen, a former engine shed packed with food stalls, with seating in the middle. It has great food and drink options, and a buzzy atmosphere. There’s something for everyone at Foodhallen, so it’s a great way to keep teenagers happy – I think we all ate from different food vendors in the end!
If you are rained off at any point whilst in Amsterdam with teenagers, head to Filmhallen (next to Foodhallen), a cinema complex in some of the engine sheds showing all the latest releases.
Visit an old-fashioned Brown Café (like a traditional British pub) in the Jordaan neighbourhood for coffee or beer and cake. We visited Café T’Smalle which has outdoor seating on the canal if you can’t find a table inside, and nearby Café Papeneiland which dates to the 1600s and has a hidden tunnel that allowed Catholics to secretly walk to church under the canals during the Protestant Reformation.
Café Papeneiland is also famous for its Dutch apple pie served with whipped cream and Bill Clinton once visited here on a trip to Amsterdam and (allegedly) left with a whole Dutch apple pie for his family. I can vouch for their Dutch apple pie being delicious and perfect for a coffee after all that sightseeing. There were locals and tourists alike crammed into this cosy cafe on the canal side.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to sit inside a Brown Café, you can queue for the most popular Dutch apple pie in Amsterdam at Winkel 43.
The shopping opportunities are endless in Amsterdam and it depends on what your teenagers like as to whether this is important or not. As well as our usual hunt for a Zara outlet, our teenagers enjoyed wandering along all 750 meters of Kalverstraat with its high end and distinctively Dutch shops. One section of the street seemed to be competing for the ‘best and most original’ Stroopwaffles – the sugary smells in the air made us very hungry. Along the way we stocked up on Tony’s chocolate, weird flavoured cheese (coconut or blue lavender anyone?) and wooden tulips, as well as some clothing brands we don’t have at home.
There is so much more to explore in Amsterdam with teenagers that we barely scratched the surface, but it got the seal of approval from our kids who would love to go back to explore some more. They also enjoyed the day trips out to the Alkmaar Cheese Market and to see the windmills at Zaanse Schans which were easy to arrange on the trains.
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