Nemo
After our food tour, we made our way back past Centraal Station toward the Nemo Science Museum. This is set across several floors of a striking building that slants dramatically toward back toward the ground at just a gentle enough angle to allow for a fabulous roof terrace. That terrace offers a bunch of water features to play in along with food, coffee and cold beer. The day we attended was 34c, offering the perfect chance for a suncream swathed Baby Fork to run around while parents indulged in that cold beer. She may have been a little young to take in the physics of a keystone in a bridge, but she loved running across it.

A’dam
The A’dam Tower is situated across the water from Centraal Station, a brief and frequent ferry trip that doesn’t cost anything, dropping you right by its front door. The tower is topped by an observation deck rotated 45 degrees from the axis of the main building, all the better for situating Europe’s highest swing. Entrance to A’dam includes a green screen background against which to grab a couple of photos for later comedy value before a lift fires you to the observation deck through a barrage of lights and sound. The observation deck gives fantastic views of Amsterdam and also gives access to a restaurant and bar.

Foodhallen
Food halls have become somewhat ubiquitous in decent sized cities over the last few years and we’ve taken in a good few in on our travels. Foodhallen is based in a former tram shed that’s had some of the tram tracks left in place to reference its former use and features more food vendors than it’s possible to sample in one visit. We checked out Viet View for a delightful platter of Vietnamese food before being tempted by some elevated bitterballen from De Ballenbar. These deep fried balls of roux are up for grabs all over Amsterdam, but throwing more flavours into the mix, they became more than booze soaking treats. The Bouillabaise and white asparagus ones particularly hit the spot.

Little Collins
On our final morning, we had time to schedule a decent brunch so I followed up on a suggestion from a friend who’d visited relatively recently. Little Collins has two branches, with one being situated in the De Pijp convenient for our final appointment. The menu was uncommonly varied and adventurous for brunch, letting us settle on a kimchi toastie and Turkish eggs. Bonito flakes helped bring the best out of the toastie, while I could have done with a touch less Korean bbq sauce, and the Turkish eggs came with perfectly judged labne, flatbread and spiced sausages. If you’re visiting Amsterdam this place needs to be on your list.

Hanky Panky
In 1996, I picked up a book on tattooing that fascinated me. It was a collaborative enterprise with help from renowned tattooist Henk Schiffmacher, who at the time operated a tattoo museum in Amsterdam. By odd serendipity in 2016, when I added a fork to the few tattoos I got 20 years ago, it turned out that the tattooist I engaged on the spur of a moment at a tattoo expo was Henk’s daughter Morrison, herself a highly regarded tattooist. After getting that tattoo, I left with the offer of having it touched up for free should I find myself in Amsterdam. The offer stuck in my head and before leaving, I took the opportunity to get http://www.illustratedbyabi.co.uk to draw a knife to match the fork she designed all those years ago. Morrison was good enough to fit me in at the legendary Hanky Panky tattoo parlour on the Sunday morning to add the knife and touch up the fork. I’m overjoyed with the results but it must be said, flying with two freshly tattooed biceps and a baby to control was quite uncomfortable.

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Food tours are right up my street, so to speak. I’ve done a few, both in cities I’m new to and ones I’m confident I know, and found them to be a perfect way to explore new environments, though getting fed is a bonus too of course. Our recent trip to Amsterdam presented a perfect opportunity to book a food tour, so I got in touch with Secret Food Tours and arranged for us to get acquainted with Amsterdam through their Amsterdam Secret Food Tour on our first morning in the city.

The tour used the statue of Ann Frank by her house as an easy to find landmark from which to start. On the day we attended, it was just a small group, so our guide had plenty of time to answer questions and build relationships to understand our particular interests.

Having been kept awake a certain amount by Baby Fork as she got used to new surroundings, we were grateful that the first stop included coffee. While we topped up our caffeine levels and snacked on sweet, caramel stroopwaffel, the chef at this venue was preparing Poffertjes for us. These sweet, fluffy pancakes are traditional and quickly devoured by the group who enjoyed the butter and icing sugar. After a quick demo of how these are cooked, we were on the move again.

On our way to the next stop, we were given plenty of information on the history of Amsterdam and its position in the world. We even got the chance to look inside one of the tiny, historical dwellings that surrounded a traditional, picturesque courtyard.

It’s an oft repeated suggestion that Amsterdam is built on herring bones, such is the popularity of the fish in the city and the economic contribution that it made. Nowadays it’s a ubiquitous snack, widely available throughout the area having been salted and then served with raw onion and pickles. I guess some might be a touch squeamish about this one but the whole party loved it and, given its importance to the region, it would have been borderline heresy to leave it out of the tour. Before making tracks for our next stop, we also sampled Kibbeling, morsels of battered cod served with tartare sauce. Making use of a lighter batter than is typical in the UK, they proved another hit.

Our next stop gave us a typical Dutch bar snack. Paired with a beer for authenticity, Bitterballen are breaded and deep fried balls of a thick roux that our guide told us were served in every single bar in Amsterdam. This is a claim repeated the following day by Dutch friends so I shan’t doubt its veracity. You can see how these would encourage one more beer…tipping you toward a hangover to be traditionally cured with more herring the following morning. Apparently, two portions will get you back up and running.

Our final stop on the tour gave us the opportunity to sample hearty meatballs and sausage along with Stamppot (a traditional mashed vegetable dish) before we parted with a further tasty gift from our guide.

If all that sounds like a lot of food, rest assured I’ve left some out lest you undertake the tour yourself and miss the element of surprise. Suffice to say cheese and Jenever (a juniper flavoured liquor that shouldn’t be confused with gin) made an appearance. The tour lasted about four hours and easily accommodated a pushchair, took in a good portion of the Jordaan district with lots of local knowledge, and gave broader information about the history of Amsterdam, illustrated with maps by our guide. It hit all the traditional Dutch cuisines and was a deliciously informative way to get to know more about Amsterdam.

Disclaimer: A portion of  the cost of our attendance was covered by Secret Tours. Opinions are impartial.

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As I’ve posted about previously, we chose Amsterdam as the destination for Baby Fork’s first trip abroad. It seemed to offer a decent combination of a short flight time, good public transport and all the convenience a major European city can offer to cope with any unforeseen situations.

I can’t really imagine doing a hotel with a baby this age (16 months). Surely a successful bed time routine with a baby in a hotel room just results in a few silent hours trapped in said room trying not to disturb the baby? With that in mind, we booked an Airbnb a short train ride from the city centre that looked to offer the right balance of amenity and price.

We began our trip by driving to Leeds-Bradford airport where we’d stumped up for parking a short walk from the terminal to ensure maximum convenience, particularly on the return leg when we were unsure how well Baby Fork would have coped with the flight. This was more costly than the shuttle bus service we would normally plump for, but was worthwhile for the removal of a potential point of failure.

Security was relatively painless and the staff were perfectly helpful. This was when we started to appreciate the convenience of the Pockit stroller that we’d picked up from some friends, fresh returned from a trip to Sri Lanka. Being able to fold this into an improbably small package before reconstituting airside was a great advantage and much more preferable to having to check the pushchair into baggage.

Once airside, Baby Fork started to do laps of the area, an occupation complicated by the typically stag- and hen-heavy atmosphere. This isn’t something that’s particularly bothered me before, but seems to have taken an even stronger foothold since I last flew. While it never felt threatening, I was surprised to see people merrily strolling (stumbling in some cases) around the terminal with glasses in their hands outside of the bar areas that one assumes are licensed.

The flight itself was relatively uneventful, Baby Fork taking it in her stride as long as we occupied her, though becoming a touch agitated at the landing. It was a few hours later that we encountered the most significant issue of our trip when we missed a connecting train and therefore missed the local supermarket, thus condemning us to 12 hours subsisting on crisps while attempting to sooth Baby Fork to sleep with the random small bottle of formula we’d stuck in a bag as a contingency. We managed to get her to sleep just before midnight and in time to grab a few hours before setting about Amsterdam the following morning. More of that to follow in subsequent posts!

Regarding our luggage, we managed to follow our instincts for minimalism. You can see below the sum total of our packing, all of which went happily as hand luggage. Within this, we managed to cram enough nappies and wipes for the duration along with a good selection of baby food sachets to compensate for any shortfall upon arrival. Once situated, the range of food on offer in the supermarket was of course the equal of that on this island.

The next couple of days were spent buzzing back and forwards between Amsterdam Centraal and our apartment taking in as much as we could, though it must be said less than we would have fitted in as a couple due to fitting in the bedtime routine and pushchair logistics. After getting stocked up with appropriate groceries, our Airbnb turned out to be a very good base, further enhanced by the presence of a friendly house pest by the name of Furball who took every opportunity to dispense head bops and purrs.

The rest of our trip passed without incident and gave us plenty of things to think on when planning subsequent holidays. It was certainly challenging being in the centre of an unfamiliar city with a baby intent on running headlong into the path of every tram, bike, car and train, but we still managed to explore somewhere new to us and largely navigate the pitfalls of international travel with a small child.

While there was certainly a touch of heightened anxiety about the whole enterprise that might give us pause for thought about another similarly hectic few days in the near future, we can’t wait to show Baby Fork more of the world in due course…though we may take reins next time. Oh, one more lesson: flying with a baby after having both your arms tattooed four hours previously is both a literal and figurative pain. To be avoided if possible. Again, more of that later.

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