5 Key Thing To Know When Spending New Years in Amsterdam

I know what you’re thinking, New Years is SOO far away. Relatively speaking yes you are correct, in terms of travel, you’re almost late to the game booking your New Years plans.

Spending somewhere epic for New Years had been on my bucket list for quite some time. I don’t know what it is about ringing in the New Year but everyone always wants to have amazing plans. I couldn’t think of anything more fun than visiting Amsterdam for the first time and being in the city known for it’s partying, so when we knew we would be travelling back to England for Christmas I was very sure to add this to the itinerary.

I probably should have done more research before heading to Amsterdam over New Years if I’m being honest. We booked accommodations later than we probably should have and had no dinner reservations at all (I’ll get to that in a second). So the first piece of advice I would give you when booking a trip, basically anywhere, over New Years is to book everything as soon as possible.

Weather

I don’t know if it’s because I’m from Canada or because I’m just used to it but I expected the weather to be a lot worse in Amsterdam than it actually was. It may have been grey and a bit overcast, but you can easily get away with a light jacket and a layer or two. We even took a canal ride to really see the city, that’s definitely not something you’d be able to do in most Canadian cities on New Years. There wasn’t any rain for us while we were there so we got pretty lucky. Obviously it’s no spring time in Amsterdam but going in the dead of winter wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be. Besides the fact that it got dark early and light late, the weather was pretty nice.

Restaurants

We were pretty naive, or just plain dumb (depending on how you look at it), when it came to where we were going to eat for dinner on New Years Eve. I’m not sure why it never crossed our mind to make reservations somewhere but it didn’t. In the evening we walked around for 3 hours (that’s not even an exaggeration) until we found somewhere that would take us. At which point we still had to wait 45 minutes for a table and paid the most ridiculous price for a meal. What we also failed to realize besides restaurants booking up quickly, was that many of the restaurants were closed. It wasn’t like North America (I’m mostly speaking about Canada), where everything is open and people are begging for others to come join them on New Years. If we had have been staying in an Airbnb, I would have preferred to stay in and make dinner ourselves, would have saved us a couple hundred dollars and definitely a few hours!

Attractions

This is going to sound obvious but there are a number of major attractions in Amsterdam that are closed on New Years day or close early on New Years Eve, so you will have to plan accordingly. If you plan on only visiting the city for a couple of days like we did, make sure to look ahead online to see what attractions are open during what times. That way you can plan your itinerary around what’s open. We knew the Anne Frank museum wouldn’t be open on New Years day and we also knew it would have been too busy for us to get in line when we arrived the day before New Years Eve, so we got up super early New Years Eve and headed over to get in line. It’s a good thing we did. Arriving at 8 in the morning (an hour before opening), we weren’t even first in line. In fact we still had to wait about 45 minutes after the doors opened. Even still, I’m so glad we mustered the courage to get up before sunrise because even at 9am the line was so long I thought people would be celebrating New Years Eve in line!

* As a note the Anne Frank Museum no longer allows non-ticketed entry before 3:30pm so make sure you buy way in advance.

Fireworks

We also didn’t expect, or know about the fireworks tradition in Amsterdam. Apparently it’s perfectly legal, and tradition to light fireworks at any point in the day and in any location imaginable. It was almost laughable how careless people were with fireworks. It just seemed so dangerous to me that in the very narrow streets of Amsterdam adults and children alike were just lighting off fireworks at their leisure. My future mother-in-law almost got hit by one during a run in the middle of the day in a busy park for crying out loud! If you think the day is bad just wait until midnight hits. I couldn’t even believe the amount of fireworks that went off it was crazy, and also really fun! At first we watched a few in one of the popular squares before we moved on back to our hotel and saw plenty from our doorstep.

New Years Day

If you are even slightly hungover on New Years Day I would recommend you stay inside until at least midday. Ben and I made the mistake of getting up rather early because we wanted to ride bikes along the canals. I couldn’t believe the garbage and state of the place. There were broken bottles, cigarette butts, food wrappers, whatever you can imagine scattered all over the ground, literally everywhere. It was so bad they had people out sweeping and street cleaners at just about every corner it was crazy. The piles that they wrestled up as well were huge! I couldn’t imagine walking through that much dirt and stale beer smell even a little hungover – I’m so glad I wasn’t!

All and all our trip to Amsterdam for New Years was certainly one I will not forget. There was so much to do, so many activities happening that it was hard to keep up!

Have you been to Amsterdam for New Years? What was your experience?

Additional Notes

ACCOMMODATION

• Airbnb are obviously very popular in Amsterdam so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding something within your budget. For tips about booking Airbnb check out my post here.
• Booking.com is another great resource if you’re looking to book a hotel instead of an apartment. Most of our stays in were booked through Booking.com and I couldn’t have been more pleased.

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