I'm planning a study-trip to Europe this summer. I'll be a week taking classes in London and next week we move to school in Spain. I'm trying to decide wether to use that weekend in between to go to either Amsterdam or Brussels. Is one choice better that other, considering the 2-day limit? We're a group in between 22-27 years-old.

Quite frankly, I'd recommend Antwerpen for that age group.

Amsterdam is great for high-art museums, shopping, and beer and dope. It's a beautiful romantic city, great for walking around and enjoying being on the canals. Food is -- ahem.

Brussels is not a particularly lovely city, and its artistic attractions are mostly very quirky. It does however have FANTASTIC food and drink, if you care.

Antwerpen is very lively, great food, compact, lots dancing and clubs, fantastic food, beer and spirits, and very hip art and design scene.

Amsterdam is going to give you the biggest change of pace from London, apart from the food.

Amsterdam is one of my very favorite cities in Europe

and Brussels one of my least favorite

and that seems to be rather a consensus on Fodor's

Bruges, Blegium would make a great weekend spot

amsterdam is a youthful city with lots to see and do - day and night no matter what you like - great museums to tawdry redlight districts and coffeeshops legally selling cannabis off a menu board. One of the very most beautiful cities in the world by anyone's criteria IMO - the many canals at nights when they are sublimely illuminated are so so sweet!

Brussels to me is one of the ugliest - most center town seems to have been torn down and is blah modern IMO - it does have some neat sights but i'd opt for Amsterdamned damned damned any day.

You really think Brugge woould be a great weekend spot for a group that age? Most people I saw in Brugge near that age were honeymooning couples, and I got the impression there wasn't much of a nightlife in town.

Actually both Amsterdam and Brussels have a great night life - Amsterdam for the reasons Palenque points out above (esp. the 'coffeeshops', although not my thing), and Brussels because the people who work for the European institutions are i) supplanted from their home country and bored and ii) have very high disposable incomes. The area around Place-St.-Gery in Brussels has an amazing number of bars and cafés. There is also a restaurant street with some tourist traps and some really good restaurants (Rue des Bouchers), and off the beaten track there are some great restaurants in Ixelles. But I'm sure your decision won't be made on the nightlife. Both destinations are interesting to me, but the old (17th c.) architecture in Amsterdam has probably been better preserved. Brussels was largely rebuilt in the 19th century so there is a lot of Art Nouveau out of the centre. And as Zeppole mentioned, Antwerp is also a fantastic city - more alive and hip than Brussels, and with great shopping and cafés. Oh, and did I mention the shopping?

I disagree that Amsterdam has bad food. We found great food there. From my trip notes:
"Two cafes on the same block as the hotel were wonderful: Café Katoen for a university atmosphere, and Café le Jarden, 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."


I think your age group would love Amsterdam. Good live music there, at the Paradiso.

If you're looking for a simple hotel in a great location, try the Hotel Residence le Coin. Each room is relatively large, in a studio-type layout, with a tiny kitchenette. Bathrooms are very nice, too.

I don't enjoy Dutch cuisine. There is a certain international style of contemporary trendy cooking, and people in Holland can do it as well as people in New York, but it's not all that interesting to me when I travel as going someplace where the native traditional cuisine comes right out of the native soil and is unique.

But apart from herring, local cooking in Holland is soemthing I don't enjoy. Apart from some nicely prepared salmon, the best meals I had were cooked by Iranians and Arabs.

ttt

zeppole, because you personally don't enjoy traditional Dutch cuisine, does not mean Amsterdam's "food is -- ahem", as you said.

The food we enjoyed there was all fashion-forward, contemporary, and extremely good. If that makes it " a certain international style of contemporary trendy cooking", still doesn't make it bad.

PeaceOut,

Did you eat any Dutch food while you were there?

From a website PROMOTING dutch cuisine:

"A country so much characterized by its Calvinist heritage and the generally perfectly matching grey cloudy weather surely can't have a fancy cuisine, and it hasn't.
Superficially this is only illustrated by the traditional Dutch home cooked meal: potatoes, accompanied by a piece of meat and boiled vegetables. The whole lot of it preferably covered with heaps of gravy. Herbs and spices appear to be obsolete altogether, which makes the food pretty bland."

http://home-l2.tiscali.nl/~sparhawk/cuisine.htm

Ha Ha. A trick question. Very good, zeppole! If eaten in Holland, isn't it Dutch food?

We did not experience Amsterdam's " Calvinist heritage and the generally perfectly matching grey cloudy weather", either. It was gorgeous weather, in early June. We loved Amsterdam. If anyone's interested, here's my trip report (hope it's not TMI):

"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 le Jarden, 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)."

PeaceOut,

No! It isn't a trick question. Go to any Dutch tourist website listing restaurants and you will see that only some are offering Dutch food.

This is from an article by Seth Stevenson of Slate:

"With my friend Dave in the 'Dam for a brief visit, we decided we'd splurge and eat at D'Vijff Vlieghen—perhaps the most famous spot in town for traditional Dutch food. Each chair here is emblazoned with the name of a star who once sat in it (I got Billie Holiday).

"While the food was excellently prepared, and the service was impeccable, I'm still not the least bit clear on what Dutch cuisine is. It seems to involve a lot of suckling pig. It does not seem to involve a lot of spices. Or pleasure. Dutch food is best described as highly competent and painfully bland.

"Of course, there's some delicious Indonesian and Surinamese food around town. Such are the spoils of colonialism. But the only native Dutch dish that's really caught my fancy is bitterballen."

The Dutch are famous for their chocolate, their fries and their beer (as well as their herring). Belgian chocolate, Belgian beer and Belgian frites are all better than their Dutch counterparts (and I dare say American pancakes and peanut butter are better too).

I love Amsterdam as much as you do. I can't wait to go back. I cannot honestly recommend Dutch cuisine to anybody, and the Dutch themselves prefer to eat in restaurants that don't serve it.

zeppole, you're missing my point: because you don't like Dutch cuisine (and maybe lots of people also don't like it), doesn't mean Amsterdam doesn't have wonderful, trendy, contemporary restaurants with excellent food!

We were impressed with how easy it was to find a nice dinner. We had none recommended beforehand; we just went looking to see what looked appealing to us at dinnertime. It was easy to find really nice places to eat.

No, not Dutch food. Debating the quality of "Dutch" food is NOT the point.

I'd go to Amsterdam. We just got back from Brugges, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, etc. Having been to Amsterdam before, I thought it would be the best place to meet up with our college-age daughter and her friends for their free weekend because it had the most things to do after they "dumped" us for the day.

They went clubbing and to the casino every night after we ate dinner, but we had a great time doing all the museums, walking tours and so on together, too. Never having been there, they were stunned by Amsterdam's uniqueness--and this was a pretty travelled group. All could not get over both the visual and practical appeal of the tram system.

Food? No problem. Whatever type of cuisine you want is there. Although everyone seems to rave about the Indonesian rice meal, we were rather underwhelmed by it, but it would be hard not to enjoy trying out the pancakes (either the crepe kind or the little puffy poffertjes) and the good fish/shellfish, great frittes, and beer abound just about anywhere. Since you might want to see the Ann Frank House, two immediate good restaurants recs that I can make are a Thai restaurant and a "brown" cafe not far away.

For Thai:
Rakang Thai
Elandsgracht 29
Amsterdam 1016 TM Netherlands
+31 20 620 95 51
I'd make reservations if you want to be here.

For upscale food at a bar/cafe frequented by locals:
Cafe de Reiger
Nieuwe Leliestraat 34,
1015 ST Amsterdam.
+31 20 624 74 26
They didn't seem to be taking reservations here either time we went.

I'' make it clear. We did like Brussels. Our two most outstanding meals were there. We did like Brugges (for a day). We thought the Antwerp shoppping street was amazing. But on the whole, Amsterdam is a simply wonderful weekend option for young (and old!) people.

The DUtch are the only people I know who when you ask them what they are having for dinner will tell you the vegetable they are having, rather than the meat. You have to remember that until 50 years ago the Dutch were largely a very poor nation with suitably poor food to match. Dutch cuisine, like much of Britain's and Germany's cuisine is basic simple and filling.
That said there are hundreds of really good restaurants offering all sorts of other cuisines in Amsterdam, just as there are in any large cosmopolitan city.

Natalia if you decide on Amsterdam then have a look and see what is on at Paradiso (www.paradiso.nl) whilst you are over. You can buy tickets and temporary membership at the door for most concerts, unless a really big name is appearing. It is worth going there just for the building and the atmosphere - if the music is good it is a bonus.
During the summer there are also often concerts in the parks.
There are plenty of good pubs for you, and a few night clubs too, plus of course all the museums, coffeeshops, etc etc.

Amsterdam for sure. don't think this age group is particularly into food and fine dining. We had a great meal at an Irish pub along a canal across from the Marriot. Also 2 wonderful meals at Sogno.

Look, I'm not going to keep typing the same thing over and over. Many of us who travel -- in all age groups -- pick a destination because we love the cuisine. When I traveled abroad in my 20s, I certainly looked forward to going to France to EAT. And while I certainly enjoyed eating Vietnamese and couscous on my student budget, I was very glad to learn about French food by eating it.

Likewise, when I was in my 20s, I traveled to Lebanon to enjoy the cuisine and the wine. I also thirlled to seeing the pyramids in Egypt as part of the same trip, but I didn't fail to notice that the food and drink was inferior to that of Lebanon.

In my original post, I very carefully added the words "if you care" when I was discussing food in my response to the original poster.

But I think those of you who are boosting Amsterdam because you had a good time there (have any of you even been to Antwerp?) are overlooking the fact that maybe other people -- even people younger than you -- really do enjoy exploring other cuisines as part of their travels. Dutch cuisine is not a destination cuisine in my opinion -- and that opinion is neither underinformed or a minority opinion.

hetsmij,

I appreciate your thoughtful reply -- and I do mean that -- but I will point out to you that Italy has also been a very poor country where starvation is still a living memory of many people in their 70s. Italians even have a phrase for how to make-do as a cook when you're poor: it's "cucina povere."

However, the foods of impoverished Italy are delicious.

I suspect that the cold Northern climate of Britain and much of Germany simply doesn't support a highly flavorful terrain, and hot climates sometimes favor the development of spicy foods (although why the Koreans are so incendiary, I don't know).

It may be that the hearty food is really a life saver in those damp often sunless climates.

There are many, many reasons to go to Holland and Amsterdam. They don't need a great cuisine to be a first class travel destination.

But I still prefer Antwerp for fun, hipness, youth and food. And that's why I thought this group should consider it.