Hey there,

I'm a student from Amsterdam and I have to make a assignment on Amsterdam and Tourists. Could you please tell me what you (as a tourist) find attrective and less attrective about Amsterdam. Why would you go to Amsterdam or why wouldn't you?

I hope you can help me!!!

Bye bye!!

Greetings from Marise

I love stepping out of Centraal and being confronted with the trams, the pedestrians, the gable-roof buildings, the huge bicycle parking lot! It's so different from my hometown in Florida.

I guess it is the architecture style and the canals that are the most visually appealing.

I have greatly enjoyed the Van Gogh museum, and have interest in seeing the Marine museum (Scheepvaart? sorry), and others.

Love a slow bike ride around Vondelpark.

Enjoy being able to freely communicate in English and appreciate that locals don't seem to mind doing so.

We visit almost every year. Good luck on your paper.

Amsterdam is a city where it's hard for someone to feel out of place. It's an incredibly diverse, eclectic, multicultural bohemia that's got something for everyone. If you want to go to art museums and eat in canalside cafes, it's there. If you want to spend all day shopping and snacking, you can do that. If you want to do absolutely nothing but smoke marijuana in coffeeshops all day, that's OK too.
For me, it's the open-minded cosmopolitanism that makes me love Amsterdam so much. You can do everything that you can do in other cities, but without the pretension and attitude.

hi Marise, I like the Leidseplein area and Vondelpark, beautiful. Also the canal rings neighborhoods, lovely. I liked that it is a very easy city to get around on foot, even if you don't use public transportation. One part of the city I found "less attractive" was around the train station and The Dam, so I was glad my hotel was a bit out of central, on a tree lined street in a residential neighborhood.

The lively mix of old and new, where old doesn't mean "in need of replacement" as "old" things usually do in the US where everything has to be new to be valid.

The sense of "people really live and work here" even though the place looks like a museum.

The variety of food that reflects the location between Germany and France and Belgium, and the colonial influence (Indonesian etc.).

The art and the way it is presented, from the most outrageous modern to the most revered and old.

The sense that it's okay to be different, that not everybody may approve of everybody else but that people are prepared to let each other be.

The polite and mostly genuine good-naturedness found in many people, without studied and over-the-top "friendliness" - I've never heard "Hi, my name is Fred and I'll be your waiter tonight, how are you guys doing?".

WK

I love art and loved the art in Amsterdam, especially Van Gogh Musuem. Also, found the people very helpful and the fact that so many of them spoke English made getting around a bit easier. I also liked the canals and botanical gardens and the coffeehouses. Not a big fan of the food though and the prices seemed high for what we had to eat. Hope this helps.

Less attractive: the construction at station centraal and all the subway related construction. Lack of good signage around the train station for the trams and busses. Speeding bicyclists. They show no mercy!

Attractive: Everything else, especially just walking around the different neighborhoods and soaking up the atmosphere. There are so many great museums, and there's always something cool going on. I love going to Droog design and can't wait till the stedelijk museum is back in its permanent home.

I've been to Amsterdam many times, but not really. In 49 days, I'll finally get out our Schiphol and into the city!

We're attracted by what we expect to be a beautiful old city, easily walkable, with good public transportation.

The canals, the art, the street culture are all reasons for us to have finally cut another part of our itinerary short to see your city. I believe its reputation as an open-minded, but civilized, place is a major draw.

Oh -- and you have a GREAT airport.

Hi Marise

The airport is beautiful, the city is beautiful, the art museums are lovely - I love Rijks- and Van Gogh.

I like the architecture and canals; the streets lined with trees.

The shops are wonderful - as is the food! And the people are really friendly. As other posters mentioned - there is a very nice feeling of freedom wherever you are.

And I just love all the mothers (and fathers) riding their bicycles with a baby in front of them and sometimes a toddler at the back!

oh, yeah, Schiphol is a great airport, easy to use and we love the whole train system, espec from Schiphol to Centraal. Trams are great, too, but I was pickpocketed on one ride!

The architecture, the museums, the friendly people who are often fluent in English. The herring in the spring. Beautiful city! Hope to return this year.

I'm also a college student who is visiting Amsterdam this June. I would talk a lot about the red light district. To many American men it sounds like the best place on earth. also the coffee shops. Me personal I can't imagine what it's going to be like

Here's my trip report of our family's visit last June. Hopeit helps:

"Amsterdam. Five nights’ stay, first visit for all of us.

LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Amsterdam! You always hear of the Red Light district and the coffee shops and the laissez-faire attitude, but you don’t hear how open and friendly the people are, how lovely the canals and side streets, how wonderfully trendy the restaurants and cafes, how people are out strolling at all hours of the night and you feel safe everywhere. I think I’d expected it to be quaint and charming (which it is), but in a dark wood-paneled cliché way, not in the young and contemporary way it is.

The standard reply we were given in Amsterdam, when we asked for anything, was always “Of course!” How refreshing.

We stayed in a fabulous location, at The Hotel Residence le Coin, which was directly across a small street from the Hotel de l’Europe, down the street from the Hotel Doelan, on Nieuwe Doelenstraat (sp?). A great neighborhood in the heart of old Amsterdam.

The hotel has a lift and A/C, also free use of the hotel’s washing machine and clothes dryer in the basement (which was welcome as we’d been traveling over a week when we arrived there). Each room has a little kitchenette, a nice-sized bath, large rooms with wooden floors and a sitting area. It’s fairly new, so everything sparkles. Very friendly front desk, too.

Two cafes on the same block as the hotel were wonderful: Café Katoen for a university atmosphere, and Café de Jaren, for great table seating on the canal.

Amazing dinners at two restaurants in particular:
“Stout!”, at Haarlemmerstraat 73 (www.restaurantstout.nl). Fabulous ‘foamy asparagus’ soup with shrimp, chateaubriande, fresh fish, dessert course, wine list. Very trendy lighting. Great service. We’d gone to the neighborhood in search of a restaurant called “Lof” which we’d seen written up. We didn’t like its atmosphere, but were lucky that Stout! was just across the street.

Also at “Restaurant Dining Eleven” we had a great dinner. It’s at Reestraat 11. Also trendy and contempory, well-presented and beautifully-served meal.

Another nice dinner at “frenzi”, at Swanenburgwal 232. Very simple and contemporary. We arrived shortly after 10:00p.m., when most restaurants close in Amsterdam, and persuaded the owner to sell us any left-overs they had in the kitchen! They put together a nice Caesar salad with cooked-in-the-shell shrimp and mango. Very nice.

Also a good brunch at a place across the street from frenzi—called “Puccini”. Creative salads and sandwiches. Very nice also.

We took a canal cruise one evening. Toured the Anne Frank Huis and the Van Gogh Museum. Visited the Nieuwe Kerk (sp?) Our teens went to a concert at the Paradiso and loved it.

One afternoon we did the 2:30 “Best of Holland” excursion to Volendam and Marken, with a stop to see wooden clogs made, Gouda cheese created, and to visit windmills. It was by bus, with a boat from Volendam to Marken. A lot of fun. Even our two teens liked it.

Our teens also liked shopping at one street in particular, between our hotel and the museum district. Also a Zara shop there, and many others like it. They thought the selection and prices were better in Amsterdam than what they’d seen in London and Paris even.

A detail about Amsterdam if you go there-- carry enough Euros in cash, because many places won't accept a credit card for a 'small' purchase (i.e. under 25 EU).

The only unpleasantness we encountered in Amsterdam related to cab rides and inconsistent pricing. Especially when our two teens were grossly overcharged cabbing to the hotel from the concert. They were well aware of the route, having walked it already twice, but we'd wanted them to cab home late at night. They knew the cabbie took a very round-about way back in order to over-charge. Also, when we arrived at the taxi sand at Central Station, I was literally swarmed by rather aggressive cabbies and felt uncomfortably jostled by them all.

A great trip all in all. Weather was spotty, with rain showers on and off, but not bad.
We took the Thalys from Paris to Amsterdam. It was very nice, until we encountered a derailment which had rail traffic stopped at central station. We were re-routed to Schipol airport, and told our tickets would get us to Central Station on another train. It didn't make much sense, as that train also got held up by the derailment mess, and was a commuter which was quite slow. Also, they didn't give us much direction as to how to find the next train, but we figured it out. Some locals simply shrugged and indicated that the train system didn't usually run 100 percent smoothly.

Not a good start to Amsterdam, but we loved it there anyway."

I spent part of my honeymoon in Amsterdam and would love to go back. It is a very interesting city , mainly the architecture and canals. Great city to walk in. And it's not everywhere in the world where you can window shop for a working girl
The only bad things were we felt a little unsafe at night due to some of the people enjoying the lenient narcotics laws.