How to Spend a Full Day in Amsterdam for Under €15
In Tokyo, almost nothing is free. The parks are free. Most other things cost money — entry fees, machine fees, vending machine fees. The city assumes you have somewhere to spend money and makes it easy to do so at every point.
Amsterdam is different in ways I am still adjusting to after two years. The public spaces here are genuinely, uncompromisingly free, and a remarkable amount of what makes the city good happens inside them.
I tested this properly last week. One day, everything on foot or bicycle, strict €15 ceiling including food. Here is exactly what happened and what it cost.
Morning — Vondelpark: €0
Vondelpark is 47 hectares in the middle of the city. On a dry day it contains: people working, people reading, people having arguments, people playing instruments badly, people playing instruments well, dogs, children, a rose garden that is not yet in bloom in March but will be by May, and the particular atmosphere of a city that has collectively decided to be outside.
I arrived at 10am and stayed until noon. I brought coffee from home in a flask. I read. I watched people cycle through on routes that had clearly become habitual. Cost: €0.
Lunch — Albert Heijn, Overtoom: €3.80
The Albert Heijn on Overtoom is two minutes from the western park entrance. The in-store bakery produces sandwiches that cost between €2.50 and €3.80 and are genuinely good. I had a tuna and cucumber one for €3.20 and a small coffee from the machine for €0.60. Ate it on a bench on the Overtoom. Cost: €3.80.
Afternoon — Rijksmuseum garden and Museumplein: €0
The Rijksmuseum garden is free. The museum costs €25 — worth it, but not today. The garden has the same architecture, the same symmetry, the same particular quality of Amsterdam civic space: designed to be used, not photographed. Though everyone photographs it. I did too.
Walked to the Stedelijk Museum exterior — the building is worth looking at even if you do not go in. Then along the Museumplein to the Concertgebouw, which I have now walked past perhaps forty times and still find remarkable.
Cost: €0.
Late afternoon — IJ ferry, Noord: €0
The IJ ferry from Centraal to Noord is free. I have said this before and will say it again because it remains the most useful piece of practical information about Amsterdam: a twelve-minute boat crossing, free, every fifteen minutes, giving you a view of the city from the water that costs €25 on a tourist canal boat.
Went to Noord. Walked the NDSM waterfront. Went back on the ferry. Felt the particular satisfaction of having used a city correctly. Cost: €0.
Dinner — Marqt, reduced section: €6.20
Marqt supermarkets reduce their prepared food after 6pm. The Marqt near the Jordaan had three options left at 6:15. I took the pasta salad (€3.80 reduced from €6.50) and a piece of fruit (€0.90) and a sparkling water (€1.50). Ate at home. Cost: €6.20.
Total: €10.00
Under the €15 ceiling with €5 to spare. In Tokyo this would not be possible. In Amsterdam it requires almost no effort — just the willingness to use the city as people who live here use it rather than as it is sold to people visiting it.
The park is the point. The ferry is the point. The reduced pasta salad is, in its own way, also the point.
Yuki Tanaka writes about Amsterdam for Journallo. She moved from Tokyo two years ago and is still figuring it out.
