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About
Travelling With Children
Amsterdam is a great city for smaller explorers. Dutch culture is family oriented and relaxed, and children are welcome pretty much everywhere. Getting around is a cinch on a bicycle or bakfiets (box bike) but public transport is also extensive, cheap and reliable, and clanging trams are an adventure. A boat trip (of some kind) is a must. Hire a canal bike, go on a tourist cruise or (for free) take one of the ferries that go back and forth to Amsterdam North (behind Centraal Station). You can also buy a ticket here for the high-speed ferry that zooms through Amsterdam port to IJmuiden and the beach.
When it's raining, TunFun Speelpark is the place to be – an enormous underground playground fashioned out of a multi-storey car park. Top 'educational' stops include interactive science museum NEMO , housed in a giant, green ship designed by Renzo Piano, and (for pirate fanatics) the Scheepvartmuseum is the place to go, complete with its replica Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship moored outside. Art-loving explorers will enjoy the Van Gogh Museum's audio guide for children . Numerous parks and playgrounds offer free entertainment and activities and a dozen or so animal farms (kinderboerderijen) often have “cuddle hour” on Wednesday afternoons (when schools finish at midday) for bonding with bunnies. Wilder beasts can be spotted in the excellent Artis Zoo. There are restaurants with special children's menus (and colouring sheets, crayons and games), but almost every Amsterdam cafe can serve up a toasted sandwich so there will be no need for hunger tantrums. Pancakes and poffertjes (puffed up smaller versions) are top scoff. At the Kinderkookkafe in the Vondelpark, children take on the whole culinary caboodle, cooking and serving up meals to family and friends.
Outside Amsterdam, top attractions include theme parks such as Efteling (a Disneyesque experience with folkloric touches) and Space Expo at Noordwijk – fascinating for budding astronauts and for miles of wild, windy (and free) beach . Activities for children can be found in local magazines Uitkrant (www.uitkrant.nl) (look under jeugd), and N20 (look under kind) and www.uitmetkinderen.nl (out with the children). The 320-page Kidsgids English guide, 'the perfect guide for the smaller explorer', provides an invaluable reference point for every aspect of life in the Netherlands when you have children. Hotels can often provide babysitting (using agencies such as Oppascentrale) and expat websites like Elynx are also useful places to go to find this information. There are some creches in sportscentres, for example, but this is pretty unusual.
When it's raining, TunFun Speelpark is the place to be – an enormous underground playground fashioned out of a multi-storey car park. Top 'educational' stops include interactive science museum NEMO , housed in a giant, green ship designed by Renzo Piano, and (for pirate fanatics) the Scheepvartmuseum is the place to go, complete with its replica Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship moored outside. Art-loving explorers will enjoy the Van Gogh Museum's audio guide for children . Numerous parks and playgrounds offer free entertainment and activities and a dozen or so animal farms (kinderboerderijen) often have “cuddle hour” on Wednesday afternoons (when schools finish at midday) for bonding with bunnies. Wilder beasts can be spotted in the excellent Artis Zoo. There are restaurants with special children's menus (and colouring sheets, crayons and games), but almost every Amsterdam cafe can serve up a toasted sandwich so there will be no need for hunger tantrums. Pancakes and poffertjes (puffed up smaller versions) are top scoff. At the Kinderkookkafe in the Vondelpark, children take on the whole culinary caboodle, cooking and serving up meals to family and friends.
Outside Amsterdam, top attractions include theme parks such as Efteling (a Disneyesque experience with folkloric touches) and Space Expo at Noordwijk – fascinating for budding astronauts and for miles of wild, windy (and free) beach . Activities for children can be found in local magazines Uitkrant (www.uitkrant.nl) (look under jeugd), and N20 (look under kind) and www.uitmetkinderen.nl (out with the children). The 320-page Kidsgids English guide, 'the perfect guide for the smaller explorer', provides an invaluable reference point for every aspect of life in the Netherlands when you have children. Hotels can often provide babysitting (using agencies such as Oppascentrale) and expat websites like Elynx are also useful places to go to find this information. There are some creches in sportscentres, for example, but this is pretty unusual.
