travel adventures: amsterdam

Finally getting around to sharing photos and some of our favorite places we visited in Europe! As a reminder, we were gone for a little over three weeks and visited Amsterdam, Belgium, the Champagne and Burgundy regions of France, and Paris. In case you missed all the photos, I shared everything here: #burdsleavethenest. This blog post will cover our first stop – AMSTERDAM!

We absolutely LOVED Amsterdam and could totally see ourselves living there. People were super welcoming and super kind/friendly to us/Lucy. Everywhere we went, people stopped us to “talk to” Lucy. The city itself was charming with cobblestone streets and the canals everywhere, plus awesome parks. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco — a big city, with neighborhood pockets that made the city itself feel really neighborhood-y and small. We also had great food, coffee, and drinks there and found that it was one of the easiest places to travel with a baby. So, goooooo! And if you do go, here’s our favorite spots and what we did on our trip. ☺️

WHERE TO STAY: 

We love love love loved De Pijp neighborhood. There was so much to do there without feeling touristy at all — great restaurants, cafes, shops + bars, a cute park, and easy to walk to other areas of the city. We also loved that we could easily get takeout (because, 👶🏼).

FOOD:

Little Collins — brunch or dinner

Cafe Cosy — cute cafe with outdoor seating in De Pijp that also serves kombucha!

Bar Fisk — delicious seafood. we LOVED this place! everyone who worked there was so kind to us and the chef kept bringing out random food items for Lucy, like strawberries. cannot recommend this place enough.

PANCAKES — for Dutch pancakes, obviously. So delicious! (Pictured below – I CANNOT HANDLE HER FACE IN THIS PIC! 😝)

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CT Coffee and Coconuts — for healthy food all day. it’s super cute inside and would be a great co-working spot!

Mastino — quick pizza takeout in De Pijp, because #bedtime

Sushito — another easy takeout option in De Pijp with surprisingly delicious sushi

Vegan Junk Food Bar — SO GOOD. as the name suggests, it’s a vegan restaurant, but everything is a vegan play on not-so-healthy stuff, like sloppy joes and loaded nachos. it was YUMMY and the vibe was really casual and fun.

Pluk — for healthy lunch like avocado toast and acai bowls / an Instagram dream (pictured below)

Winkel 43 — for famous apple pie. So many people recommended this place to us! My grandparents have an apple orchard, so I’m pretty picky about apple pie, but this was a pretty good alternative. 😉

Mana Mana — we hadn’t read about this or been recommended by friends, but it was about a block from our Airbnb. the restaurant served incredible Mediterranean food — we LOVED everything we ate. 💯

Cottoncake — half adorable clothing boutique and half cafe. We loved our breakfast here and the gals working in the shop were so sweet!

DRINKS:

Brouwerji Troost, Bier Fabriek, GlouGlou (adorable wine bar), Oepidus Brewery (coolest  branding / beer labels and tasty craft beer!), Walhalia Brewery

MARKETS:

Albert Cuyp Market (huge daily outdoor market), Foodhallen (epic food hall with lots of different options)

TO DO:

WALK AROUND — this is our go-to whenever we travel and favorite way to explore a new place. We spent most days just wandering around and visiting different neighborhoods. We would grab a coffee or peruse through different shops or markets. This is obviously also an easy baby-friendly activity. 🙂

THOSE DAM BOAT GUYS CANAL TOUR  — I know a canal tour is touristy, but we had a really good time! Plus Lucy has a BLAST being on a boat and looked absolutely stupid adorable. 💛 This tour didn’t feel *as touristy* as other options. There were only 6 people on the boat total and you could bring your own food + drinks. 🍾

VONDELPARK — this is a huge, incredible park right in Amsterdam. We spent an entire morning there exploring — great walking paths and tons of fun areas for kids and babies to play. Lucy LOVED the swings! We brought our own picnic and people/dog watched. So fun! We kept saying how much Jack would love this park, because dogs were cheerfully running around everywhere. It was awesome!

NOORD — this neighborhood is a bit off the beaten path (but a quick train ride away) but has a great park, walking trails, a windmill, plus some epic breweries.

Thanks for reading! And because I took literally a million photos and it’s hard to pick favorites, here’s a few more photos from our time in Amsterdam! ✨ I’ll be sharing a post about our time in Belgium soon!