Showing 1-8 of 8 results
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Amsterdamse Bos
The product of a 1930s make-work programme, this woody recreation area a few kilometres southwest of Amsterdam is a boon for urban nature-lovers. You'll find a petting zoo, a sports park, a rowing course with hire craft, and a pancake house, not to mention the open-air Amsterdamse Bos Theatre that stages plays in summer. The forestry museum covers flora, fauna and construction of the park.
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Artis Zoo
The world's third-largest zoo (and the oldest in mainland Europe) is the place to bring children in Amsterdam. Laid out in the former Plantage gardens, locals as well as tourists visit to stroll the lush, well-manicured paths. Packed with listed 19th-century buildings and monuments, it feels like a zoological museum.
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Heineken Experience
Right on the site of the old Heineken brewery you can take a self-guided tour that's tantamount to brew-worship. You can learn the history of the Heineken family, find out how the logo has evolved, and follow the brewing process from water all the way through to bottling. Along the way you can watch Heineken commercials from around the world, join a Heineken bottle on its life's journey and drive a virtual dray horse.
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Holland Experience
Situated next to the Rembrandthuis, this multimedia hype-fest tries to cram all of this little land's big attractions into an overpriced mishmash of sights and sounds. The audience dons 3-D glasses and sits on a rotating platform that lurches along with a plotless half-hour film from tulips to windmills to threatened dykes. Oh dear.
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Olympic Stadium
The grand Olympic Stadium was designed by Jan Wils, a protégé of famous architect HP Berlage, and is functionist in style. The arena was built for the 1928 summer Olympic Games, and has a soaring tower from which the Olympic Flame burned for the first time during competition. The stadium is classified as a national monument, and today hosts sporting events and concerts.
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Stadsschouwburg
This theatre, with its balcony arcade, dates from 1894. People criticised the building - as they've criticised every city theatre before or since - and the funds for the exterior decorations never materialised. The architect, Jan Springer, couldn't handle this and retired.
The theatre is used for large-scale plays, operettas and festivals such as Julidans, Amsterdam's renowned july festival of dance.
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Tunfun
This cool indoor playground is located in a former traffic underpass, an unused eyesore for over a decade. These days kids can build, climb, roll, draw, jump on trampolines and play on a soccer pitch. There's even a children's disco - this is Amsterdam - and a café serving poffertjes (little pancakes). Kids must be accompanied by an adult. It gets rather busy when the weather's bad.
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Westergasfabriek
A stone's throw northwest of the Jordaan, this late-19th-century Dutch Renaissance complex was the city gasworks until it was all but abandoned in the 1960s, its soil contaminated. The fabriek has re-emerged, thankfully, as a new cultural and recreational park, with lush lawns, and a long pool suitable for wading, sports facilities and even child care. The aesthetic of surrounding Westerpark goes from urban plan to reedy wilderness, with marshes and shallow waterfalls.
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Showing 1-8 of 8 results
