The Best Things To Do in Amsterdam as a Family

Speaking as someone who is of Dutch descent, I was primed to fall in love with Amsterdam. But I didn’t expect it to feel so much like home to me and my family. Central Amsterdam is absolutely charming, a city of curving canals and bridges; beautiful, centuries-old buildings stacked together; trams and streetcars; museums and gardens; and yes, bicycles galore.

My family and I spent a week in Amsterdam, exploring the central core while taking a few trips beyond it to some smaller towns and pit stops.

In general, we found Amsterdam easy to get around. It’s a short train ride from Schiphol Airport to Centraal Station, where you can connect with the metro or the many trams. (There’s a service and ticket center right across the square from station.) We purchased weeklong passes through GVB so we could tap on and tap off trams or subways; you can also just use a credit or debit card to tap on and off.

So without further ado, here are some of the best things to do in Amsterdam as a family!

Amsterdam is synonymous with canals, and one of the best ways to see the city is from the water. There are dozens of canal boat companies large and small, offering a mix of themed tours covering history, food, local landmarks, architecture. If you gather near the docks just outside of Amsterdam’s Centraal Station, you’ll find a number of larger tour companies.

But we’d highly recommend our tour through Captain Jack Amsterdam. The smaller boat lets you get to know the guide better. Our guide was amazing, funny and full of stories. Captain Jack’s signature all-inclusive tour is 90 minutes and includes a mix of Dutch snacks plus beverages for kids and adults. It leaves from docks right near the Rijksmuseum.

One of our favorite activities in Amsterdam was the Albert Cuyp Markt, a multi-block, open-air market in De Pijp neighborhood. The streets feature a mix of shops, restaurants, and stalls offering clothing, gifts, coffee, snacks, and more. While it can be a little touristy, it also offers several signature Dutch tastes.

Perhaps the most famous vendor is Rudi’s Original Stroopwafels. Join the line and watch them deftly craft the waffles on the hot irons, then slather them with warm caramel.

Amsterdam is a city RICH in museums, from art to history to architecture and much more. Many of the museums can get busy and require you to book in advance. If you’re planning a trip, book your tickets as soon as possible, especially to more popular places like the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum.

Some suggested museums:

• Anne Frank House – a powerful museum that takes you through the building next door, laying the historical groundwork for her story before you climb through the hidden doorway into their preserved house. At the exit to the museum is a cafe; we spent some time there with our boys processing all we saw. Book tickets as soon as possible!
• The Van Gogh Museum sits across from the Rijksmuseum on Museumplein. The modern museum takes through Van Gogh’s life through his work and his contemporaries. Book this one as soon as possible, too! We waited too long and ended up having to book a smaller tour through Viator.
• The Rijksmuseum houses a beautiful collection of art, including a lot of Dutch masters, from ancient to modern. We were able to reserve tickets the day of our visit.
• The Grachten Museum was a sleeper hit for us, a renovated house that details the history of Amsterdam’s canals, how they were developed, how they affected architecture and culture.
• The Verzets Resistance Museum documents the storied history of the Dutch resistance during WWII.
• We stumbled upon the Houseboat Museum, which is on a canal boat that was converted into a house and eventually into a museum in a delightful midcentury style.

On our canal boat tour, the guide jokingly said to us, “We Dutchies are bad at food, but great at snacks!” Now, we found a lot of excellent food, but the snacking in The Netherlands truly is great. Some of our favorites:

• Bitterballen: in their original version, these bites are beef stew that’s chilled, shaped into balls, then fried. What’s not to like? You’ll find them with a variety of fillings and dipping sauces these days. I enjoyed a sampler of them from a vendor in the Foodhallen market.
• Krokets: similar to bitterballen but usually more oblong, these giant fried beauties are filled with chicken, beef, veal, vegetables, or other goodies. These are especially fun at the Febo automats.
• Frites/patats: listen, the Dutch are perhaps the best at fries. Especially when served with a variety of dipping sauces.

• Herring: A signature snack, herring is typically lightly pickled and served with pickles and diced onion. We encountered it served on its own or in a bun.
• Cheese: The Dutch are excellent at cheeses, especially milder, nuttier types like gouda and edam. You can often find a lot of flavored versions, too.
• Stroopwafel: Another Dutch signature; thin waffles freshly pressed with a layer of warm caramel. Skip the touristy versions dunked in a million different toppings. The plain version – or one half-dipped in chocolate – is the way to go.
• Kibbeling: delightful little chunks of fried fish. One of my favorites.
• Poffertjes: tiny little pancakes served by the handful, with butter and a dusting of powdered sugar.

As a result of Dutch colonization over past centuries, there’s been an influx of various cuisines to the city, the two foremost being Indonesian and Surinamese. Amsterdam features a number of world-class restaurants serving the cuisines. We only experienced takeaway Surinamese fare (from a stall in the metro station!), but it was delightful. At Indonesian restaurants, one of best things to order is the rijsttafel (literally “rice table”), a communal meal consisting of many small dishes, from fried prawns to curries, rice dishes to meats and veggies on skewers, grilled vegetables, and much more. We enjoyed a rijsttafel at Mama Makan, the in-house restaurant at the Hyatt Regency.

Amsterdam has a number of great parks large and small, including a big zoo (ARTIS). The Ooesterpark is a popular spot, as is the Amstelpark, which winds along the Amstel river (and features the windmill that Jamie and Roy biked to in Ted Lasso!). We enjoyed our stroll through Vondelpark, which includes plenty of paths for biking and jogging, an open-air theatre, and a location of Brouwerij t’IJ brewery. Vondelpark isn’t far from the Rijksmuseum and Museumplein; it’s also home to thousands of squawking parakeets!

One of the signature dishes in Amsterdam are pannenkoeken: thin, plate-sized pancakes topped with all manner of sweet and savory ingredients. Two of our favorite stops were Upstairs Pancakes and De Carrousel Pannenkoeken. Upstairs Pancakes is perhaps one of the more famous stops. The upper-floor pancake house claims to be the oldest in Europe; it’s cash-only, reservations can only be made by phone about a week in advance, and the restaurant seats maybe a dozen people, so it fills up quickly.

Tony’s Chocolonely is a chocolate maker dedicated to responsible and sustainable practices. Their superstore in central Amsterdam, not far from the train station, is a bit touristy but is still a fun and colorful stop. The underground shop and museum tells the story of their chocolate and lets you make your own chocolate bars, from chocolate to add-ons to the label. About 90 minutes later you can stop through to pick up your bars!

Growing up as a Dutch descendent in the Midwest, I’m familiar with meat-and-potatoes dining, so it’s no surprise that the hearty Dutch dish of stamppot is just that: mashed potatoes with veggies and sausages. It’s found at plenty of restaurants around the city, of course, including the popular stop Moeders, which is a tad touristy but features traditional Dutch cooking. With help from a local Amsterdam blogger, we found ‘t Heemelrijck, a corner eatery across from the Albert Cuyp Markt that’s been feeding hungry visitors since 1949. Their stamppot dishes felt like a taste of home.

If you’re visiting roughly between late March and early May, we’d highly recommend booking a day at Keukenhof botanical garden, a nearly 80-acre garden in Lisse, about 30 minutes outside Amsterdam. There are a number of companies who sell entry to the gardens paired with bus transport from central Amsterdam, usually from around Centraal Station.

You could spend a whole day in Keukenhof, exploring the many gardens, seeing millions of tulips and other flowers, participating in crafts, seeing kids and adults in traditional Dutch costumes, enjoying snacks from the vendors, climbing the windmill, and so much more. (Pro-tip: look for the little cookies with almond filling!)

We also spent a half-day on a bus trip north of Amsterdam to see historic windmills in Zaanse Schans, cheese-making and wooden shoes in Edam, lunch in the seaside town of Volendam, and then a stroll through the island village of Marken.

The knowledgable guides provided history and context along the way. We booked this itinerary through Viator!

Thanks to The Netherlands’ train system, you can easily visit a number of cities large and small within 60-90 minutes. We spent much of a day in Delft, an adorable little town with a beautiful historic town square (get coffee and sweets at Tazz!). Delft is home to the Vermeer Museum and the Museum Prinsenhof, and the Royal Delft Museum & Factory.

Royal Delft is home to the signature blue and white ceramic tile, and we highly recommend a visit. You can explore the museum, tour the factory, and see the tile being made and painted (some by hand!). You can even take a class and paint your own tile. The museum has a cafe, too, and true to its long-time connections to English royalty, you can enjoy afternoon tea!

If your kids are old enough to hang on their own a bit, there are plenty of options for adults to go out without traveling far! We made a couple outings as just the adults, first to Brouwerij t’IJ’s brewpub on the east side, located underneath a giant windmill. It features ample outdoor space to relax with a flight of beers.

The Dutch equivalent of an English pub is a brown bar, a cozy and convivial place with plenty of beer, crowded tables, and friendly service. My particular favorite was Cafe de Spuyt near the Rijksmuseum. It’s a place to rub elbows with locals while sampling from more than 150 different beers. (I was drawn to it because they carried the hard-to-find trio of beers from the Westvleteran Belgian Trappist monastery.)

Even before we left, we were planning our next trip to Amsterdam! There was so much more to explore, we can’t wait to get back.

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