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Posted by: Willeke on 2008-11-30, 05:37:49
It will be a bit chilly but that is not really a problem in town. The best site I have found for information about Amsterdam is: amsterdam.info/ I like many of the museums in town, with a preference for the smaller, lesser known ones. Like the one which is a couple of town houses with a church hidden in the attic: museumamstelkring.nl/ Or take your pic out of the short list on the site also mentioned above: amsterdam.info/ museums/ Walking through town, specially on a fair day, is great, specially if you make your stops in one of the many small cafes, almost every other street corner seems to have one. There is a lot of shopping all over town, but I have been to the Jordaan area recently and was surpriced by the many nice small shops I found there, and on the way there. Of course, a good start to any stay in a town is a tour, the best tours you can get in Amsterdam are by tour boat, the cannal tours are popular for a good reason. And if you want to see something outside town, with a 6 day stay you should have time for that, you can go to Centraal station, and buy a train ticket, almost all other towns in the Netherlands are great to visit. Recommended old style Dutch towns are: Haarlem, Delft, Alkmaar, Gouda, Utrecht, (and a lot of others.) The Hague, (locally more known as Den Haag) is slightly different, in that it has never been a walled city, and therefor it looks slightly different. Rotterdam has been rebuild after WWII, in the style then popular, and is still being build, so it has a different looks. Almere and Lelystad have been build in the last 25 odd years, so completely different. A nice tour to one of the few open air museums open round the year is Zaanse Schans, zaanseschans.nl/ You can often get a tour, but you can also take a train out to Koog Zaandijk and walk it from there, although at this time there is a short ferry because of work on one bridge, see the site above. Added: Amsterdam may be on the same latitude as Maine, (I believe it is true but I have not checked it,) but it has a completely different climate. We almost never have snow in winter, on average less than 3 days with snow cover, most years less, it nearly never goes over 5 cm/ 2 " of snow. It is, on average, just above freezing during the days in winter, with the odd day it is about 12 C above, (that is warm enough to sit outside without a coat if you find a place in the sun, out of the wind.) When I say chilly, I meant just above freezing during the night and a few degrees warmer during the day. Rain is always likely in and near Amsterdam, but mostly it will be a drizzle at most. |
