Many people know that I love mountains and nature more than anything else. However, sometimes it’s a welcome change to travel to some city, and enjoy a bit of „comfort“ in cozy cafés, galleries and tiny design shops. That’s why I decided to visit Amsterdam with one friend of mine in order to finally see its iconic canals and ginger bread houses in person. Yeah, we spent all three days wandering around the city centre, sipping coffee, eating cakes and spending (maybe) too much money on postcards, notebooks with pretty binding, planters and some other rather useless thingies.
Now, I’m going to share with you some of my favourite places we visited during our stay in this lovely city. There is never enough of Amsterdam guides, right? 🙂
EAT BREAKFAST
We arrived to Amsterdam late at night, so naturally our first concern was where to have breakfast in the morning. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and I always enjoy visiting new coffee places in order to try something new. That’s why we wanted to find a perfect place where we could start our morning. 🙂
Our first stop on Saturday morning was Corner Bakery. As we expected, the place was really crowded – apparently everyone from the neighbourhood wanted to have delicious Saturday brunch in this cute yet quite small café. However, it was worth waiting for a table. This café is vegetarian/vegan friendly, so don’t hesitate to ask for soy milk for your granola. For those who prefer bigger breakfasts, they serve also different types of sandwiches, omelettes, scrumbled eggs, etc. 🙂
Another highly recommended place is Bar Spek. White walls, clean design, good coffee and delicious food – that’s why I consider this café one of the best ones in Amsterdam. Try their chia seeds pancakes with blueberry and honey or, if you’re really hungry, then pick up breakfast of champs that contains overnight oats, huevos rancheros, avocado, granola with blueberries and smoothie called green monster.
DRINK COFFEE
There’s never enough of good coffee. 🙂 I’m very spoilt in this sense, since we have many really good cafés here in Prague with specialty coffee prepared by experienced baristas. And, we were lucky enough to find a place like that also in Amsterdam (my gratitude goes to Instagram!). So if you enjoy great coffee, make sure to visit Loki – a trendy hipster place with great baristas, cool magazines to read and the most photogenic table you can imagine.
SHOP DESIGN
Amsterdam is, among other things, also a city where you can find a lot of great design shops distributing both local and internetional brands. If you’re fan of independent designer work, conscious brands and slow fashion, then I have two tips right for you. 🙂
The Gather Shop offers not just fairtrade fashion, but also handmade accessories, jewellery and homeware from small studios. In short, everything looks absolutely gorgeous in this store.
Sukha Amsterdam is probably the most famous designer studio in Amsterdam. Everything they sell (soft wollen scarves, cardigans, leather bags, blankets, jewellery, etc.) is fair-trade and made of natural materials. Besides, the interior is simply perfect.
SHOP PLANTS
When visiting Amsterdam, you definitely shouldn’t miss Wildernis – probably the most famous gardenshop in Europe (at least according to my own Instagram surveillance :)). Even if you’re not a big fan of plants (but I know you are :)), you should still visit it and enjoy its beautiful interior. Moreover, they serve coffee there!
So that’s it – a few top places I really enjoyed in Amsterdam. I would love to hear from you which one you like/want to visit the most. Feel free to leave a comment or ask me anything you want.
