Amsterdam with Teens: Allez Go!

Our three-day get-away began with a pre-dawn text message from Thalys, the high-speed rail serving the Paris-Amsterdam corridor, reminding us that we would be departing from Paris Gare du Nord at 8:25am. It even provided a hotlink to our ticket bar codes, complete with train car and seat numbers. Oh, the wonders of owning a Smartphone! Now I would't have to print out paper e-tickets in my pre-caffeinated stupor.

Tip #: Food is good. I stuffed some portable snacks – fruit, nuts, bottles of water – into my handbag and herded a sleepy lucky-one-and-only (Loo) toward the door. It can be difficult to wake a teen, but an early departure would give us the better part of the day at our destination: Amsterdam. The high-speed train, traveling at speeds up to 300 clicks per hour, would put us there in time for lunch. It would also mean beating rush hour traffic on the Paris Metro. Indeed, we arrived at the station with enough time to grab croissants and hot beverages to go with the healthy goodies I’d brought from home. And even a teen can’t resist a picnic breakfast on the train!

Tip #2 Make your first stop relevant to them. Loo is currently studying World War II. So our first stop in Amsterdam was the house-turned-museum where the Anne Frank and her family took refuge from the Nazi occupation of their adoptive city in July 1942.

This is a living museum in the truest sense of the expression. You are directed through the building where Otto Frank, Anne’s father, once headquartered his spice business. It was into the hidden back rooms on its upper floors where the Franks – Otto, Anne, her sister Margot and mother, Edith – as well as four others shared 500 square feet (46 square meters) for two years and one month before being betrayed and deported to Hitler’s concentration camps in August 1944. Among the eight, only Otto survived. And the publication of his daughter’s famous diary is thanks to him. Originally titled The Achterhuis, or secret annex, and later re-titled The Diary of a Young Girl, it is a chronicle of discrimination and hate and their impact on real people, written by a teen who aspired to be a writer: Anne Frank. The eponymous museum reveals the history of the war and the Holocaust, and gives voice to the stories of the millions of lives touched by these horrific events in a way that is meaningful and accessible to people of any age. It blew Loo away. Me as well. There’s nothing more enriching than “seeing” history in context.

Note: Due to the deserved popularity of the museum, lines can be long and the crowds plentiful. We recommend buying tickets on line, but plan to visit just as others are heading off for an early dinner. The museum stays open until 9pm winter, 10pm summer. Arrive fortified from your late lunch with the intention of closing the place. You won’t be disappointed.

Tip #3: Next stop: your choice. But don’t push too far. If you start your cultural visit with a “teen-friendly” destination, your credit will be good and your young companion will be more willing to follow you to the must-see on your list. In our case, the Van Gogh Museum provided just the right amount of push. A wonderfully doable museum – not too big, not too small. Three floors span the artist’s career with the help of some of his most important masterpieces. Teens like to maintain that they don’t like museums. But once they are caught up in your excitement and all that eye-candy, their presumed disinterest is easily betrayed. However, if your teens do run out of gas, interest or patience before they reach the end of any exhibit, set them up with a project – to sketch or write a vignette about the characters within the work of their choice  – while you carry on. They are old enough now to be left on their own. And they revel in such moments of independence.

Tip #4: Never enough local color.

With a few museums now under our belt, Loo and I took to the cobbled Amsterdam streets cameras in hand, snapping scenes of boats and bikes and 17^th century building decorations, slipping into cafés and boutiques as our moods dictated. We call this “following our noses”. Eventually our noses led us to a bike rental outfit where we opted to do as the Amsterdammers do: explore the city on two wheels. You can rent bikes for as little as two hours or for the length of your visit. Just make sure you have a good lock, as thefts are common. And on the busy Amsterdam streets, the simpler the bike, the better – there really is no need for gears or modern hand brakes.

Which leads me to…

Tip #5: Be ready to be spontaneous. After all, an adventure wouldn’t be an adventure if you didn’t get off the beaten track from time to time, or chuck the must-do list in the bin. Teens, in particular, love these unplanned moments.

Tip #6: When in doubt, shop. Now it may be because Loo is a teenage girl, but the hunt for the perfect remembrance is often the highlight of her trip. Amsterdam, in particular, abounds with unique storefronts, vintage shops and outdoor markets. It was bulb planting season when were there, so we picked out some interesting tulip species for our home garden. And we highly recommend window-shopping among the streets of the Jordaan, a hip neighborhood to the west of the city’s center.

What tips would you add to the list? Please leave them in the comments below.

Images of Anne Frank and Van Gogh's bedroom in Arles, on view at the Van Gogh Museum, courtesy of Wikimedia commons. All other Images copyright, Sarah B. Towle, 2011.