Northern European Cruise: Amsterdam

July 28, 2025 | From the Founder, Patrick Verst

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

After a bouncing, rocking and swaying day in the North Sea, we arrived in the Port of Amsterdam for day nine of our cruise. Aside from being a safe haven for marijuana in their "coffee shops" and being a very socially progressive country overall, I didn't know much of anything about the Netherlands, much less Amsterdam specifically, prior to my arrival. With a full day at sea prior to our arrival, I did some research on Amsterdam prior to our arrival to maybe allow myself a little extra time to sleep in the morning we arrived.

In short, there were three things I really loved about Amsterdam:

1. This may be one of the most walkable major cities I've ever been to, but there is a disclaimer to that.

2. If I were an Instagram model looking for perfect, picture-worthy vibes, very few major cities can compete with Amsterdam's vibes. Every turn you make offers the perfect historic building or scenic canal to strike a pose in front of.

3. The architecture in this city is very diverse and really embraces the extremes of classic and contemporary architecture. That basically is my personality and taste in a nutshell...extreme in the polar opposites in many regards, including my taste in architecture.

Despite my love for those three things, I struggled quite a bit in this city if I'm being completely honest. The struggles started with the bicyclists. I love that this city relies a lot more on bicycles than cars. However, the amount of bicycles and the overall lack of awareness of the things around them makes this city very stressful to walk through despite the fact that it is generally a very pedestrian-friendly city. The moment you leave the cruise port, you're greeted by a sea of bicycles and mopeds parked under trees and long lines of bicyclists riding down the bike path. Often, crossing the bike path is more stressful than crossing the road.

After you leave the cruise port and make your way downtown, practically everywhere is jam packed with people and bicyclists taking over both the streets and sidewalks. Granted, it didn't help that I was there during tourism season. There is a chance that maybe the winter or fall might be slightly less busy, but the overall vibe I get when doing research online is that this city is quite chaotic year-round. Also, I think if I had visited Amsterdam from another major city such as New York City, London, Rome, Chicago, etc., the amount of people may have been a bit less overwhelming. However, because the majority of my previous two days on land were spent hiking mountains in the rain and in towns that are way smaller than Amsterdam, I think I was experiencing culture shock being in such a busy city all of a sudden. It seems very strange for me to say that the city is where I experienced culture shock because I practically live in downtown Tampa. I am absolutely a city boy at heart. Nevertheless, unless you're in Tampa during a pirate invasion or something (Hello, Gasparilla Pirate Festival!), Amsterdam is definitely a much busier and more densely populated city than Tampa.

Another area where I struggled a bit was the food. I made my way through the Albert Cuyp Market around lunchtime, planning to get some lunch there. However, the market was so busy and most of the foods didn't look the most friendly for gluten-sensitive people such as myself. I even did a quick Google search to see what types of food the Netherlands is famous for and was greeted by many items that are not typically the best choices for the gluten-sensitive: stroopwafels (waffles), frietjes (festive French fries), pannenkoeken (a hybrid between a pancake and a crepe), appletaart (apple pie), haring (often breaded and/or served on a sandwich bun), oliebollen (powdered donuts with fruit inside), etc. Running out of "authentic Dutch" options, I went to Florentin, located not too far from the Albert Cuyp Market, and ordered a breakfast arepa! With origins from Colombia and Venezuela, arepas are a very far cry from authentic Dutch food, but it was an absolutely delicious arepa nevertheless!

Enough of the things I wasn't the most fond of! After I finished up lunch, I made my way back towards the heart of downtown to take in some of the more touristy landmarks in rapid-fire tourist fashion.

I walked by Centraal Station.

I was greeted by a sea of pigeons at Dam Square and the Royal Palace.

I paid to use the restrooms at Magna Plaza. Not pictured: The restrooms.

I walked through the adorable neighborhood of Negen Straatjes. I'm such a sucker for canals, gondolas and cute riverboats.

After visiting all of the sites I wanted to see, I was ready for an escape from all of the people and noise, but I wasn't quite ready to return to the cruise ship yet. So for my first time ever, I stopped by a bookstore while on vacation. I fully anticipated that I wouldn't even be able to read about 3/4 of the titles, thinking most of them would be in Dutch. Much to my surprise, this turned out to be an English bookstore. Perfect! I purchased two books that I could have likely easily purchased in the U.S. First, I purchased Life of Pi because I had heard great things about the Broadway stage production. Second, I purchased Greek Lessons by South Korean author Han Kang, which sounded like a very fascinating read. I bought both of these books knowing I wouldn't read them until I returned to the States. What I didn't know until as I was writing this blog post is that the bookstore, which shall not be named, from which I purchased these books is actually a London-based bookstore that is owned by an American investment group. I thought I was being all hipster going into a local bookstore and then came to discover a month later that what I did was nearly the equivalent of going to McDonald's while in Amsterdam for an authentic hipster cheeseburger. *sigh* It's the thought that counts I suppose.

Once I finished up at the bookstore, I made my way back to the cruise ship to begin our overnight journey to Belgium. However, before I conclude this post, there are three very fascinating things to note about our journey out of Amsterdam.

First, as we were making our way out of the Port of Amsterdam, guided by one of Amsterdam's finest ship pilots, we started driving forward, which turned out to be the opposite direction we needed to go to get to the North Sea. We drove for approximately 30 minutes before we finally reached the turning basin to turn around and head towards the North Sea. The use of turning basins in ports is very normal. However, having a cruise ship drive 30 minutes to get to the turning basin is abnormal. It's not that our captain or the ship pilot did anything wrong. Rather, the Port of Amsterdam is so tight and narrow that large cruise ships have to drive significantly out of their way in order to get to the turning basin to then head back out towards the North Sea. It was very bizarre traveling almost entire hour just end up exactly where we were an hour earlier...and to have that be the standard protocol for cruise ships in that port.

If you have any desire to go down a ship pilot rabbit hole to learn more about their daring jobs, please click here to learn more! Their work is truly fascinating, which is the only reason why I bother to mention it.

Second, after we officially left the Port of Amsterdam and slowly made our way through the 15-mile North Sea Canal, we passed by a seemingly endless amount of factories and other industrial sites. Although certainly not the most pleasant thing to look while leaving such a beautiful city, it was very fascinating and quite exciting to see all of the windmills in the area that I assume are being used to generate power for the factories to help reduce their carbon footprint.

Third, nearly three hours after we left the cruise port, we finally made it to the IJmuiden sea lock, which currently serves as the largest lock in the world! The lock vertically moves ships to allow them to transfer between the North Sea Canal the North Sea. It's hard to capture the size and scale of the world's largest sea lock when you are on the boat that is transporting through the lock. However, what I can say is that the largest locks I had ever seen before this one were the Soo Locks in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan. For a size comparison, the Soo Locks are 800 feet long and 80 feet wide. Those seemed absolutely massive as a kid. As for the IJmuiden sea lock? 1,640 feet long and 229 feet wide. More than twice the size of the Soo Locks! Below is a picture of the doors of the lock closing after we left to allow the next ship in.

Nearly four hours had passed by time we left the Port of Amsterdam, drove through the North Sea Canal and were vertically transported by the IJmuiden sea lock to finally make our way out to the North Sea. Four hours! More than anything, I'm grateful Norwegian Cruise Line is willing to offer itineraries with cruise ports that clearly are difficult to maneuver and take a significant amount of time to get in and out of. Granted, it also takes quite a bit of time to get from Port Tampa Bay to the Gulf of America, but it doesn't take anywhere near four hours.

Take this for what it is, but even a CNN article lists the Port of Amsterdam as one of the most difficult ports in the world for cruise ships to maneuver.