Hello All - We are a family of 3 - husband, wife and 16-year old son - who are traveling to Amsterdam for a wedding. We fly in on July 1 early AM CEST, with the wedding festivities scheduled for July 3 & 4. We have booked the Holiday Inn - the niu, Fender Amsterdam upto the 5th. We fly out on July 13th - so the period after the 5th is wide open for us to decide on what to do.

If we wanted to explore Amsterdam on the 1st & 2nd near our hotel and then give it a day more on the 5th, what would be recommendations? We love neighboorhood character, unique stuff and day or overnight trips. Not so much into museums, nature (becasue of the short time, but do love outdoors and would love to visit if there is a highly recommended scenic outing).

One option was also visiting London after the 5th, or taking in nearby places including Belgium? Greatly appreciated, any suggestions and recommendations, includingfor great food places & restaurants.

a day's excursion to Enkhuizen for its outdoor museum, port, old town.

https://flic.kr/p/oyRA5R

https://flic.kr/p/ov6rsu

Why not stay in the Netherlands? It is so much more than Amsterdam.
The school holidays for Amsterdam and the northern part of the country start the weekend of the wedding, so it will be high season, but why not go off into the countryside, ride bikes (not in Amsterdam), visit some of the less touristed places?
Public transport is plentiful and easy to navigate.
What are you interested in? What is your son interested in doing? Suggest he has a look online and find out what he wants to do as well.

A brilliant opportunity to visit the Netherlands and see some areas that others don't get to. Can I suggest Maastricht? A totally different vibe to Amsterdam (the culture there is Burgundian). Maastricht is about 2.5 hours from Amsterdam by car, but you can easily do it by train. Home of Andre Rieu, he sometimes does concerts there. There is an amazing church there which has been deconsecrated and is now a bookstore. The food there is also different to Amsterdam - have a look in a cake shop for comparisons, there you will see the vlaai (a kind of tart).

Other places I could suggest might be Groningen in the north (again another culture) or perhaps a visit to the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Hoge Veluwe National Park (Otterlo). It houses the world's best collection of Van Gogh paintings, and is set in the middle of a national park. Within the park you can borrow white bikes and cycle through the park, which would fulfil some of your outdoorsy desires.

If you really must visit another country then Antwerp (on the Belgian border) is still on theme.

Lavandula

Another option is a day trip by train to Haarlem or Den Haag.

while you may not be into visiting museums, I would certainly recommend a visit to the Anne Frank Haus. If your son hasn’t read The Diary of Anne Frank, or if it’s been a long time since you’ve read it yourself, I would encourage you to do so. Amsterdam is home to three world class art museums - the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedjelik and as mentioned already the Kroller- Muller Museum in the park is outstanding and the park is lovely. There is also the Museum of Dutch Resistance.

amsterdam is such a beautiful city and it is a delight to simply stroll and see the architecture.

You could theme your trip.
WW2 for instance, so Anne Frankhuis, though you may not get tickets for there now, Arnhem and Operation Market Garden, Amersfoort concentration camp, Westerbork deportation camp, Overloon, Margraten US cemetery.
That is a wide spread of the country and a car would be useful, but not essential, as it would be for this next one:

How the Dutch keep back the water. So the Delta works, the dunes, the Afsluitdijk, the Wadden sea dikes and islands, the former Zuiderzee route and so on. Even how they are giving the big rivers more space to allow for flooding.

Try and rent an electric car if you can - fuel prices are through the roof. You don't need a car until you are ready to leave Amsterdam.
You do need to decide on what museums you wnt to see in Amsterdam and book tickets for timed entries where needed. As I said you may be too late for the Anne Frankhuis but you should look asap if it is of interest to you.

get the three day tram ticket and treat the whole of Amsterdam as your neighbour hood

Thank you all so much, especially hetismij2 , @lavandula, @Madam397 for your detailed responses...And for pics/suggestions michael & billoburgler.

We are meeting you'll halfway we decided to skip London but will visit Bruges, Ghent & a bit of Brussels (as we have our train back from there) in the middle. We will definitely look into the Anne Frank Haus & even do a couple of the museums - Maastricht was a great suggestions but might not be able to fit it in. Any unmissable places for food & drink?

Hm, lots of scope for suggestions. If you are only going for a taste of Brussels, I think in Brussels try to fit in a meal in the Galeries Royales de St.-Hubert. There are simple cafés with waffles like Maison Dandoy (specialty is small cookies / biscuits), or full restaurants like Le Marmiton, which is quite a well-known restaurant. The arcade is on most people's wish list for sights anyway so you can kill two birds with one stone. I don't know how you stand with respect to other kinds of dining / drinking options, but there are also suggestions for mussels or beer if you want.

Just to get you started!

Lavandula

A shame you are following the classic tourist trail to Belgium and giving it more time than the Netherlands, which really is worth a longer stay, but it is your trip.

Just a couple of days. With school & work schedules, other constraints etc trips such as these are rare hence we struggle with the balance between really taking in a place & obtaining more varied experiences.

Am all for beer & any food recos - I believe live to eat philosophy is heavily misunderstood

food and drink, you will find that waffles are a thing in the Netherlands, not very special
Again cheese... Gouda (aged) is worth it
Dutch cooking is pretty good and of course you have the Rice Tafel in Indonesian restaurants

Belgian beer is very special (and often seriously alcoholic)
Moules Frites
Chocolate

Frankly I'd try to spend more time in the Netherlands in the places already suggested.

It's been almost 15 years since I was last in Amsterdam however I strongly encourage you to enjoy a rijsttafel at least once. We traveled by car to Bruge for two nights before retuning to the airport in Amsterdam and returning the rental car, stopping in Den Haag to visit the Mauritshaus and see "The Girl with the Pearl Earring." As the museum was soon to close for a total renovation, I had the gallery with the painting all to myself. We stopped in Antwerp on the way to Bruge to see the Cathedral, one of the major cathedrals in Europe. We stayed in Bruge at the charming Hotel Aragon, with a huge room and outstanding breakfast buffet. Enjoy the Belgian beer and especially the Chocolate. My husband did enjoy the Moules. I've been to Brussels on a previous trip but my husband hadn't so a future trip to Belgium is to be planned.

There are a number of atmospheric cafés (café = place to drink beer) in Brussels which have Art Nouveau architecture scattered around the city but a few are Le Cirio, Le Falstaff, Le Métropole. I will also give a special mention to À la Mort Subite - not as old as the others but still with the original zinc bar, and Au Laboureur, which is an authentic neighbourhood pub at the outer edge of the Ste.-Cathérine district. At Le Cirio the house specialty is a half and half - white wine and champagne. À la Mort Subite brews its own beer.

For mussels, you could look at Chez Léon, Le Zinneke, which is a bit far out (Schaerbeek) but has 69 different types of mussel dishes, or if you just fancy a stand-up meal, Mer du Nord-Nordzee, which has simple seafood meals. It is also in Ste.-Cathérine and would make a good pairing with Au Laboureur. You can also stay in that district but as there is a lot of nightlife (restaurants, bars, interesting shops), it's correspondingly less quiet.

Lavandula