Wednesday 17 December 2014

8 Hours in Amsterdam


Myself and Jason are always looking for an opportunity to see more of the world so when we were flying to Ireland a couple of years ago and found a ticket that involved an 8 hour layover in Amsterdam we jumped at the chance to see another part of the world.

After doing a quick search online we found that it's pretty easy to see some of Amsterdam while on a layover. The airport is close to the city and they are connected very well with a train that leaves every 10 minutes or so. Once we landed we headed straight down to buy our train tickets (luckily our bags were going straight through to Korea). The train was waiting for us and we were right in the city center about 15 minutes later.

On our way in to the city center.

We arrived in to the city at about 7 a.m and immediately nearly got knocked down by a bike as we wandered along the bike lane (big mistake, don't ever do that when you are in Amsterdam, people will hate you). We went for some breakfast in a restaurant close to the train station. We normally aren't big fans of hop on/hop off buses but found that that was probably the best way to see the city in such a short time plus our ticket also included a canal boat ride trip.

We weren't too sure about exactly what we wanted to see in the time frame that we had but when the bus went nearby the Van Gough museum we couldn't pass up the opportunity and jumped off to join the queue.

We waited in line for about 50 minutes but weren't disappointed when we got to see the beautiful works of art.

The outside of the museum. It was truly worth the wait.

Afterwards we decided to just walk back towards the main area of the city to try and fit in a canal boat ride. We got lost along the way but this allowed us to see some more of the beautiful city and even get a sneak peak of The Red Light District.

We were there during the day so we didn't see anything too crazy!


The canal ride itself was absolutely beautiful, we got to  ride through the tiny canals and get a peak as to what every day life is like in Amsterdam. I'd highly recommend taking a boat ride while visiting the city.

The beautiful canals of Amsterdam.

Enjoying our layover :)

One of the many boats the ride through the canals.

Once we got off of the boat we were a bit worried about time and jumped on a tram to take us back to the train station. Luckily for us our flight was delayed by an hour so we made it back to the airport with some time to spare.

We were both surprised by how much that we saw and did in our layover. It was such a fun way to spend the time and it tired us both out ahead of our long flight to Seoul. It also gave Jason a chance to see another part of Europe since he's only seen Ireland.

For those of you that are flying through Amsterdam and have more than 4 hours of a layover I'd highly recommend getting out and seeing the city!


One of the many beautiful buildings.

It's wonderful to see how many people use bikes as their main mode
of transport here!


The beautiful train station!

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