Hey. This is AmsterDads. The newsletter for spontaneous international Dads in Amsterdam.
It’s for Dads who want to keep having adventures. With their kids. Plus: tips for escaping them sometimes!
In this week’s email:
🎟 Weekend Events: Pure Markt & more
⛳️ Activities: Museum, swim, or eat cookies?
🚗 Day Trips: To the Tiki Bad?
and…
👩❤️👨 Date Night Tips: Fondue, an 80s party & more
⚽️ Man Time: the best places to watch the World Cup!
🎟 Weekend Events
It’s hard to keep up with kid-friendly happenings in Amsterdam.
💁🏻♂️ Don’t worry - I spend the week scouring (crappy Dutch) event websites, so you don't have to…
🎅🏿 Party with (New) Sinterklaas. At THE NEW SINT PARTY. The ‘New Sint’ does it differently. He’s more positive and energetic than (Old) Sint. With no servants. Plus: apparently he likes hip-hop and dancing! He’s putting on a party for young and old this Saturday. It looks fun. Sat 26 Nov, 3pm at Melkweg. Tickets here
😋 Sunday Food Market. Come and get something lekker at one of Pure Markt’s food stalls in Park Frankendael this Sunday. With several playgrounds and activities for kids, and a bunch of tasty bites from Chinese dumplings to American cakes, you won’t leave hungry. Sun 27 Nov, 11am-5pm at Park Frankendael
⛳️ Activities
Tired of the same old playground? Here’s some other fun things to do with your kids:
🏊♂️ Swim in a Wave Pool. At the Mirandabad. They have recreational family swimming time on both weekend days. My boys love the (not too intense) wave pool. And the whirlpool. There’s a few waterslides for bigger kids too.
⚓️ Visit the Maritime Museum. The place that sounds like the ‘sheep fart museum’ (near Nemo), has an impressive collection of maps, paintings, and models that are interesting to kids and adults alike. One of the highlights is the historic ship, docked at the museum, which you can climb aboard.
🍪 The Best Cookies in the World? People line-up for hours for Van Stapele cookies. Every single day. The cookies are indeed amazing! But they’re not worth lining up for hours for. I live nearby so we get them semi-regularly. No else seems to know you can order them online!
🚗 Day Trips
It’s good to escape Amsterdam every now and then.
🩳 Tiki Bad. When I took my eldest son to the ‘Tiki Pool’ last year, he said: ‘This is the best day of my life!’ It’s a tropical swimming pool, with 21 exciting (sometimes scary) waterslides, making it the largest waterpark in the Benelux!
🏹 Archeon. This place sounds cool! Step into history and discover how NL was back during hunter-gatherer times, to Roman-times, to the Middle Ages. With a Roman town, a medieval town, demonstrations, and people dressed for each historic time. Definitely worth a trip I reckon.
🚘 Want to drive, but don’t own a car? I use MyWheels: convenient and affordable car sharing. If you book your first trip with my link, you’ll get €25 off.
👩❤️👨 Date Night Tips
🍷 Drinks. Dam Square is the last place you’d think of to go on a date! But Bar 27, which overlooks it, is worth a visit. With award-winning mixologists, the cocktails are special, and the service is very good. Drinks are a bit pricey, so you might just want to go for one, before heading somewhere else.
🧀 Dinner. As it gets colder, it feels more like fondue weather, if that’s even a thing!? Anyway, Smelt on the 9 streets is always popular. They recently opened up a Westerpark location too.
👨🎤 A Show. Every last Friday of the month EdelWise is on in the West of Amsterdam. A big and fun party, that doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a slightly ‘older’ crowd (30+). This Friday it’s the EdelWise 80s Blockparty, taking you back to the time of hip-hop, ghettoblasters and breakdancing. Better stretch-up lads!
👀 No one to watch your kids? We use Sitly to find good babysitters.
⚽️ Man Time
The World Cup has kicked-off, and there are some absolutely HUGE matches on his weekend! These are best places I’ve found to watch each of these:
🏴 England v USA 🇺🇸 Fri 25, 8pm
Love it or hate it, you can’t go past Coco’s Outback for big World Cup matches. Should be plenty of brits and yanks there for this one, making it a rowdy atmosphere!🇦🇷 Argentina v Mexico 🇲🇽 Sat 26, 8pm
Bar Bacán, a South American-inspired cocktail bar in Centrum, is showing a bunch of World Cup games, including all of Mexico’s. You can also order awesome tacos at Mexican matches. And with each goal everybody in the bar gets a shot!
🇩🇪 Germany v Spain 🇪🇸 Sun 27, 8pm
A clash of football heavyweights and a must-win for Germany. Cafe Brecht is the place to be for German supporters. I couldn’t find a bar that was specifically great for Spanish supporters. I’ll keep searching for next time, or if you have suggestions, let me know in the comments!
Or, if you’re watching from home instead, are you ready (like Gus here is)?
😁 Meme of the week
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Thanks for reading AmsterDads!
I just hit 50 subscribers, which is a pretty good start. But I would love this to reach 100s, or even 1000s of Dads in Amsterdam!
It would be great if you could share this with even one other Dad you know who might like it. 🙏
Have a great weekend!
Cheers,
Dan
Great newsletter, Dan! We're going to recommend it to our listeners on BRAM RADIO this morning. Would love to have you call in one day and talk about it. https://broadcastamsterdam.nl/ You can email me direct at info@broadcastamsterdam.nl, (Cathy, producer).