Sometimes a day sightseeing in a city is not enough to see everything. If you are clever enough to plan ahead for your travel, you can maximize your trip and can even see a lot of sights in a certain place or city in just one day. This is what we did last summer 2010 during our one day sightseeing in Amsterdam, the capital city of Netherlands.

One good thing we did during our Europe tour last 2010 was planning our trip ahead of time. Five months before our trip, we already started looking for cheap flights to Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, Brussels and Cologne including affordable hotels to stay.

Let’s go back to Amsterdam. We started our sightseeing tour by taking a canal boat cruise. As far as I can remember, we started the cruise in front of the Heineken Brewery. You can get a general view of Amsterdam when doing this and it is also an excellent way of viewing its main sights. The cruise took around 90 minutes and we truly enjoyed the sights that we saw along the canals.

boats and houses along the canals of Amsterdam. This was taken during our trip last August 2010.

After the cruise, we took a walk on the historic part of the city. At the Dam Square in Amsterdam, we met a friend who currently lives near this city. Among the few sights you can see there are the Royal Palace, National Memorial statue, the famous wax museum of Madame Tussauds, the Nieuwe Kerk or the New Church and the hotel Krasnapolsky.

The famous Madame Tussaud wax museum in Amsterdam. We don’t have the chance to go inside it.

There are a lot of cafes and restaurants to choose in Amsterdam and we preferred to eat in a Japanese restaurant. While waiting for our order, we chit-chatted with our friend whom we met there. It was so far a great time seeing her again after so many years.

After our lunch, we went a bit shopping for souvenirs. You can have a lot of choices when shopping in Amsterdam. The 1 km shopping street of Nieuwedijk-Kalverstraat is quite interesting. It is a pedestrian full of tourists, students, locals and other people just hanging around. Our walk to the Red Light district was also fine but not so interesting compared going there during the night. You know what I mean!

the cheese factory we visited near Amsterdam. They also explained and had a demo on how cheese is being processed.

We also had the chance to make some sidetrips in a cheese and wood-shoe factory nearby and a photo pause in one of the windmills there. It was only a day trip but so far we did saw and experienced a lot of things and sights. It was simply a great trip we had in Amsterdam!