From Hamburg to Amsterdam: Last weekend I visited Amsterdam with my closest friends to attend an Urban music festival including stars like Ne-yo, Kid-ink, Pia Mia, Jeremih, Eric Bellinger to mention a few! We decided to stay a bit longer in the city to connect with a sightseeing tour! It was my very first time visiting Amsterdam and it was just as I imagined it would be. It is a city where you can escape into a vibrant nightlife, beautiful art museums and unique architecture! Now let´s hop on a bike, ride through the elegant floral bridges crossing houseboat laden canal, eating delicious food at Amsterdam´s Chinatown and admire the city at its best!
Amsterdam is the capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 841,186 within the city proper, 1,337,743 in the urban area, and 2,431,000 in the metropolitan area. The city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country.
First stop is Chinatown!
China town is beside the bustling market square of Nieumarkt and the popular Red light district, the area consist of a number of city blocks crammed with Asia markets, restaurants and shops. Here you will see street signs in Chinese as well as Dutch.
The most important tourist sight within Chinatown is the Zeedjik Buddhist temple, known as Fo Guang Shan He Hua. This impressive building, with its brightly coloured walls and distinctive Chinese roof, is the largest Chinese style Buddhist temple in Europe and has stood here since 2000.
Chinatown´s food journal
One of the most noticeable things about Chinatown is the amount of restaurants that can be seen in every corner. It is impossible to miss the cooked duck that is almost always hanging in the window. We all had the feeling being in China!
Besides all the Chinese restaurants you will also find food of other far east countries. As a vietnamese I also had to try some food of my country, so I visited the Restaurant `Little Saigon´ for some Banh Mi Thit. It is a Vietnamese baguette with homage mayonnaise, the usual condiments of cucumbers, cilantro, chili–this, fresh pickled carrots, coriander and grilled pork or chicken.
Have you ever heard about Ramenburger? It is a Burger with fresh ramen noodle buns, baby arugula, angus beef patty, a secret shoe glaze and green onions. Absolutely delicious!
As the centre of Asian culture in Amsterdam, Chinese markets and souvenir shops can be found dotted throughout this area. The aisles may be narrow, but squeezing your way through here can be worth it for some great deals.
Let us visit some interesting shops and see what they have...
While going through the streets of Amsterdam and discovering some alleyways you won´t miss a single coffeeshop. As you might know, Netherland is the country where marijuana and hash is legal. You can smoke pure´ weed, and many shops have sealed smoking rooms for ciggies. Beside the ciggies, there is also crazy stuff like canabis chocolate, lollipop, ice cream and cup cakes.
Febo is a chain of Dutch walk-up fast food restaurants of the automatic type. How crazy is that? Just put some coins into the automat and choose your fastfood!
While researching a few things for this article I came across a few fun facts:
- 881,000: That is approximately the number of bicycles in Amsterdam. The number is higher than the number of Amsterdam´s inhabitants. And some estimates say around 100,000 bicycles are stolen every year.
- 25,000 is the number of bicycles that end up in Amsterdam´s canals each year.
- Amsterdam has 1,515 bars and cafes.
- 2,500 is approximately the number of houseboats in Amsterdam. Most of the houseboats are occupied by residents but some are available for rent to visitors
- The city has about 20,000,000 tourists and day-trippers each year. That´s is about 20 times as many tourists as locals!
Visiting the Rijksmuseum
It is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam and the largest museum in the country. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam south, close to the Van Gogh Museum. In 2013 and 2014, it was the most visited museum in the Netherlands with record numbers of 2.2 million and 2.45 million visitors.
Amsterdam´s Flower Market
This is the only floating market in the world, and one of the most fragrant places of interest of Amsterdam. It is founded in 1862 and located on Singel between Muntplein and Königsplein in the city´s southern canal belt. You will find there all sorts of tulips, narcissus and flowers, as well as a wide range of souvenirs gifts. The market is one of the main suppliers of flowers to central Amsterdam.
It was time to dance and sing until we get tired!
On Sunday we were attending an Urban music festival in the ArenaPark of Amsterdam which I was truly exited about. The Festival takes place every year in the Netherlands with many popular artists from the U.S.
Click here to watch my video of Pia Mia´s performance. We were standing in the front row!
3 pictures above are from facebook.com/vestivalmusic
It was an exiting weekend, we got to know a lot about Amsterdam and I hope you as well. See you on my next post :)
Greetings from Hamburg
Lisa
