A Week in Amsterdam in February: Where to Eat, Drink, and Wander

One of my favorite things about traveling to new destinations is how much my weeks can be shaped by new friends and connections. Before I left, my dear friend Malik connected me with his friend Jen, who lives in Amsterdam. I love people who connect people, because I always try to do the same, and there is something genuinely thrilling about landing in a new country and finding a brand new friend waiting for you in it. Anne, Jen and I ended up sharing a Chinese New Year dinner and enjoying a show at Paradiso, and she was the one who sent me off to meet her friend Brian, who you will hear plenty about below. So much of what made this trip ours came from those introductions, which is exactly why I want to pass them along to you. Whether you’re planning an Amsterdam winter travel guide itinerary or just dreaming about a future trip, here is what I would recommend you do, see, eat, and explore over a week there.

Where We Stayed in Amsterdam

We rented an apartment on Airbnb right in the thick of the canal ring, and the location could not have been better for a week of wandering on foot. I do want to be straight with you about one thing, because it matters more in Amsterdam than in most places. Short-term rentals like Airbnb are somewhat frowned upon here, and the city has been steadily tightening the rules and the taxes around them for years. The legislation keeps changing, so if you are planning to rent an apartment rather than book a hotel, do your homework on the current regulations before you commit, and know that the landscape may look different by the time you go. It does not escape me that our wonderful hosts have their calendar turned off and I expect that if you are interested, you may be able to contact them directly (I have their whatsapp number). If that feels like more uncertainty than you want on a vacation, the central neighborhoods are full of hotels that put you within the same easy walking distance of everything I am about to recommend.

Where to Eat in Amsterdam

One of my most memorable dining experiences I had was my first lunch at Restaurant De Belhamel. It sits right on the canal, is genuinely charming in an effortless and chic way, and the food was perfect. We love a French bistro, y’all. I went for lunch and spent the whole time imagining how beautiful it would be at night with the water going dark outside the windows, so consider that your tip: go for either, but go. I loved it so much I ended up returning later in the week with Anne for a repeat experience!

If you want to eat the way the city actually eats, get yourself to De Hapjeshoek for Surinamese food. Prior to my trip, I did a deep dive into the incredibly thorough and well-organized Amsterdam Reddit Wiki.  Multiple locals described ait as the best Surinamese in Amsterdam, and after eating there I can tell you the reputation is earned. You order takeout from a little spot tucked under the metro, which only makes it feel more like a local secret you got let in on. We rolled in, asked them to place an order with enough food for 6 people, with no dietary restrictions and to really show off what they excelled in with the choices, and I can say, with absolute certainty, that it did not disappoint.

For the nights you want something comforting and cozy, Vicio Il Mastro Pastaio does fresh pasta made in house from an Italian family that was so good and so completely what we were in the mood for. For my first meal in Amsterdam, I took Anne’s parents to nNea Pizza, which is absolutely worth planning around, though you will want a reservation. And then there was Taste of Culture, where Jen, Anne, and I coincidentally managed to celebrate Chinese New Year together over dinner before a concert. Being in Amsterdam for the Chinese New Year and getting to mark it with a new friend was one of the warmest nights of the trip. Get the duck. Trust me on the duck.

Amsterdam punches well above its weight when it comes to global cuisine. You’d be remiss not to sample at least a few: Indonesian, Middle Eastern, Georgian, Syrian, and Indian food are all exceptional here. One of our favorite group meals was at Tujuh Maret, where we ordered the largest Indonesian rijsttafel on the menu and worked our way through an incredible spread of dishes. Every single one of them was a hit.

Brown Cafés and Historic Pubs

If you have never spent time in a brown café, this is the part of Amsterdam I most want you to experience. The name comes from the warm, dark, wood-and-tobacco-stained interiors of these old neighborhood bars, many of them centuries old, and stepping into one feels like stepping back a couple hundred years. Café ‘t Smalle dates to 1786 and sits right on a canal in the Jordaan, and it is exactly as lovely as that sounds. De Sluyswacht is the adorable, slightly crooked little pub housed in an old lock-keeper’s building, and it is the kind of place you photograph before you even walk in.

I also have to mention the windmill bars, because they are their own particular joy. Brouwerij ‘t IJ is a brewery sitting right under a windmill, and I will be honest that I did not make it there this trip even though I fully intended to, so I am sending you in my place. Café ‘t Sluisje up in Noord is traditional, impossibly cute, and has an incredible amount of history behind it.  The house containing it was built in 1565 and the bar has been open since 1904.  It’s a great cozy spot for a bar snack to escape poor weather, or a relaxing lunch on the terrace if the weather is beautiful.

Wine Bars and Cheese in Amsterdam

I will admit my priorities here without shame: I went to Shiraz Jardin des Vins four separate times in one week, which should tell you everything you need to know about how much I loved it. It became our place, the one we kept drifting back to. It’s perfect for a walk break while wandering with a group through the neighborhood, or as a destination to cozy up by the fire with a book.

For something cute and informal, café R. de Rosa is exactly the kind of low-key wine bar I want to find in every city. And if you are staying in an apartment like we were, do yourself a favor and stop into Chenin Chenin, a natural wine shop where I bought what felt like a small fortune in bottles to keep the house stocked all week. While we are talking about stocking up on the good stuff, Kaasbar is a cheese bar, which is a sentence that should require no further selling. Imagine sitting at a bar in fun vibrant space while a moving conveyor belt constantly rotates over 80 different types of cheese from around the world past you. I loved it, but wished I wasn’t there alone (you can only eat so much cheese for girl dinner).  It was a great dinner spot before one of my favorite evenings of the trip, which brings me to the museums. Make sure to secure a reservation ahead of time for the cheese bar if you do go!

Museums and Art in Amsterdam

There is NO shortage of museums to hit in Amsterdam. You could go to one a day and still not see them all. Personally, I don’t love to spend the bulk of my time in museums, so I am very particular about which ones I will choose to do and how much time I’ll dedicate to them on my first trip somewhere.

We did the STRAAT Museum and the IJ-Hallen flea market as a single day up in Noord, and I cannot recommend this combination enough. You take the free ferry across the IJ, where you can lose a few hours at IJ-Hallen, which runs on Saturdays and is one of the largest flea markets in Europe. After that, pop into the adjacent restaurant IJver for a snack and a beverage break before wandering the massive STRAAT museum, which is an enormous warehouse full of street art.  It was one of the absolute highlights of my week.

The Van Gogh Museum is the one everyone tells you to do, and they are right, but here is the move: it stays open late on Fridays, so I had the aforementioned girl dinner at Kaasbar first and then walked into the museum in the evening when the crowds had thinned out. If you only have time for one big museum, make it this one, and make it a Friday night. For something faster and more modern, MOCA is a quick visit and a good fit if you are into street, graffiti, pop, and contemporary work. And if you have an afternoon and a curious mind, the Embassy of the Free Mind holds a huge library of books on philosophy and esoteric thought. I did not make it inside myself, but my friends went and came back raving, so I am trusting them and telling you.

Live Music in Amsterdam

This is the part of the trip that was the whole reason for the trip, so settle in.

David Byrne at AFAS Live was the show we crossed an ocean for, and it delivered everything we wanted from it. There is something specific about traveling all that way for one artist. AFAS Live is a fantastic venue for a mid-sized show tour. Seeing events in Europe is now my go-to method of concert viewing since we cannot have reasonably priced tickets in America.

The other show was the one I did not plan really, but also will never forget. My friend Theo Katzman, who is one of my favorite musicians of all time, once told me that Paradiso is the greatest venue in the world. So when I knew I was going to Amsterdam, I decided I had to get tickets to whatever was playing there, any show at all, just to see the place for myself. We ended up with tickets to see Durand Jones & The Indications. It was absolutely fabulous, and I can now report back that Theo was right. Paradiso is, in fact, the greatest venue in the world. Built in 1880 as a religious building, it was converted into an entertainment venue in 1968, and the combination of the acoustics, the balconies, and the stained glass makes it an overwhelmingly beautiful experience.

If you want more music in your week than the two shows we built ours around, Jazz Café Alto is a wonderful spot, though it is small, so get there early if you want a seat. I did not make it to either Maloe Melo, which does blues seven nights a week, or Volkshotel, which runs jazz on Thursday nights, but both came up enough in my research that they are worth knowing about if you are chasing a particular sound on a particular night. Outside of that, there is a WEALTH of nightclubs with tech and house music galore.

A Weekend Market and a Local’s Shop

Noordermarkt is a genuinely lively weekend market in the Jordaan and an easy way to spend a morning grazing and browsing. I picked up some incredible bread, cheese, and butter there from local vendors from the house that lasted barely two days. But the place I most want to tell you about the most is Nicholas Groente & Fruit, which is where the whole connect-people thread of this trip pays off. Jen sent us to meet her friend Brian, who owns it, and calling it a fruit shop does not begin to cover it. It is a café and a street art gallery and a shop all at once, and Brian himself is the reason we ended up spending so much more time there than we planned. We took a long list of his recommendations and were better off for every one of them. If you go, tell him I sent you, and leave room in your afternoon, because you are going to want to stay.

A Canal Tour Worth Taking

Everyone does a canal cruise in Amsterdam, but we did ours a little differently, and I would do it exactly the same way again. We chartered a private vintage wooden boat through Pure Boats and had a custom tour of the canals, and it was easily one of the loveliest experiences of the week. Seeing the city from the water is one thing. Seeing it from the deck of a beautiful old wooden boat that is yours for the afternoon is another thing entirely. Even in February, bundled up against the cold, it was worth every minute and about the same price for 6 of us that we would have spent on a larger group tour that wasn’t customized.

What I Regret Missing in Amsterdam (aka Saved for the Next Trip!)

I always try to be honest in these guides about what I actually did and what I only wished I had, so here is my own list for next time. At the very top is Sham West, the one I most regret missing. It does a two-person tasting menu where you get a little of everything, and I am told it is so much food it could feed four. That one haunts me. Right in the city center is Wynand Fockink, a historic jenever tasting room that I fully intended to get to and somehow did not. After that, my big regret list includes De Kas, a fine-dining greenhouse restaurant that would be absolutely divine in the summer; Restaurant Kenneh, and a West African Fine-Dining experience with a tasting menu; Batoni Khinkali for Georgian dumplings.

Practical Tips for Visiting Amsterdam in February

A few things I learned that will make your Amsterdam winter travel guide itinerary smoother. Pack for real cold and damp, layer everything, and bring genuinely waterproof shoes, because you will be walking constantly and the weather does what it wants. Make your reservations ahead, especially for the smaller and more popular spots like nNea, because tables go fast even in the low season. Take advantage of the museums that stay open late, like the Van Gogh on Fridays, both for the thinner crowds and for the simple pleasure of seeing art at night. The center is wonderfully walkable, but get yourself an OV card for the trams and the ferries so you are never stuck. You can also just tap on and tap off buses, trams, and ferries, but make sure you use the same card each time you do so – otherwise it won’t close your ticket out.

February in Amsterdam is quiet and gray and cold, and I would tell anyone to go anyway. The canals are calm, the brown cafés are warm, the reservations are easier to come by, and the whole city feels a little more like it belongs to the people actually living in it. Ours was a week built around one concert, and it turned into so much more than that. I absolutely LOVED my visit there, and I can’t wait to go back. And if you do, make sure you say hi to Brian for us!

Are you visiting Amsterdam and want to explore my recs?  You can save this handy dandy Google map that I created with all the Redditors’ suggestions – it did not steer me wrong!  Want to thank me for all the hours of research I did on the Amsterdam Reddit for you?  Buy me a glass of wine on venmo.

Looking for more of my travel photography and guides? I have them all on my blog.