I don’t think they have any 20th century, but some of the greatest works of previous centuries. There is a Museum of Modern Art which contained an awful lot of crap. There were maybe 2 or 3 works I enjoyed.
But of course, don’t miss the Van Gogh Museum. And Rembrandt’s house was interesting.
anyway, yes: Dutch/Indonesian/Chinese dishes are quite tasty and tend to be fairly cheap too. There’s quite a difference between Dutch/Chinese and the kind of Chinese food you can get in the more “authentic” restaurants (especially in Amsterdam, which has a fairly large Chinese population), though - I personally like duck tongues, but that isn’t on the menu in the more westernized Chinese/Indonesian restaurants.
Also, we view pancakes as dinner, not breakfast (we like bread or oatmeal boiled in milk for that). You can get pancakes with ham and cheese, bacon and apple, bacon and apple stroop (“syrup” with the consistency of fairly soft butter) and all kinds of other hearty fillings & toppings.
Like France? 
Few things I learned while in Amsterdam.
Go to the museums, they’re great!
Don’t go to the museums high, they’ll be the greatest thing you’ve ever seen and never remembered.
My advice, go to the museums in the morning, spend the afternoons high. Find a nice park, smoke a joint, drink a beer, walk around, get lost, find yourself, celebrate finding yourself with a joint, wash it down with a beer, eat something, smoke and eat some more, try to remember the fabulous art you saw in the morning, sleep. Rinse and repeat.
I spent about a week in Amsterdam a few years ago, here are my observations:
I stayed at the Hotel Europa 92, it’s at the intersection of the #1 and #3 streetcars (very easy to find!), small but nice-ish rooms, quiet, the room came with a (good) Breakfast.
As far as food, Febo is cheap and the falafel-ball sandwich is good. The fresh Fruit selection is surprisingly good (the Fruitstands cater to the Stoner-crowd).
My favorite coffee house was Tuinte-Je (quiet, Fratboy-free, mostly locals, very low-key).
When you step out of Centraal Station, look to your right, yes those are Bicycles!
Unclviny
Here’s a vote for marijuana. There’s no need to smoke if you don’t want to. Brownies aren’t hard to come by, and they won’t freak you out.
I’d be too afraid of disease to get a hooker.
I went to Amsterdam twice in one month, back in May. I highly, highly recommend the FREE walking tour, which is an awesome way to meet new people. It takes about two hours… there’s a lunch break at a pretty sweet market. Lots of religious history, architectural history, drug and prostitution history… The same company also has a Red Light tour that takes place about 8pm and costs something like 10 euros.
While I was there, I…
I also stayed in hostels while I was there; they’re also a great way to meet people!
I stayed at the NH City Centre Hotel, on Spuistraat. A very nice room, and one of the two best breakfast buffets I’ve had in Europe (the other was in Vienna). I pigged out at breakfast, then didn’t need to eat again until dinner.
And look out for the bicycle paths. Always look in both directions, as you never know where a bike will be coming from. There are a lot of bikes, and they can be fast.
If you want to see a real live windmill, there’s a nice one on the Nieuwevaart canal, east of city center. I think it’s been converted into a micro-brewery.
I have fond memories of the hash and eggs at Bob’s youth hostel. I think they serve hash browns too. They had a kick ass kebob place down the street too that was greasy, delicious, and cheap. It’s been a while, so both places could have changed in the last decade. The torture museum and the Sex museum are overpriced for what you get, but I went to them high and they still stick out in my mind as entertaining. But not the type of places you want to go alone, the best part was being high and cracking up with the people I went with. I had met them at Bob’s and had a good time. Don’t be shy, a lot of the people there are traveling alone and are happy to join up for adventures.
The torture museum is hilariously bad. It mostly consists of information downloaded on wikipedia printed onto olde fashion-ed looking paper. The sex museum is not to be missed. It’s absolutely first rate.
Not hard to come by, but listen to the advice of the vendor. Don’t eat the first one, figure that there’s nothing much happening, and then eat another two. Luckily, I don’t mind sitting on a bench all day and a fair chunk of the night watching canal traffic go past.
I beg to differ. Please remember that ingesting dope intensifies the hit, and it lasts longer. Take it easy with the brownies - try a bit at a time - and wait a good hour to see if they’re working (don’t make the old “nothing’s happening, I’ll have another one” mistake, that totally wiped out my friends’ 48-hour city break - all they saw was the hotel).
ETA: er… what Struan said.
Re: brownies
Sure. “Use as directed.”
Watch out for those brownies! Mr. bink and I split a piece of cake from the late lamented Chocolata and were pretty much incapacitated for a while.
You can’t get mushrooms anymore, fwiw.
For cheap food, we always try to rent a place with a kitchen to save money. Hit the Albert Heijn for groceries, eat breakfast and lunch at home, then we don’t mind spending some cash on dinner. For reasonable food, there are those two parallel streets near the Leidseplein that are one restaurant after another–you’re sure to find something to eat there.
I found a ticket for $450. Thank you, Mr. Shatner. Hell, and it’s a decent flight, too - only a two hour layover each way.
Bob Log III is playing at Paradiso my last night in town. I am probably going to explode from all the awesomeness before I get back on the plane.
I’m sure there are galleries and stuff all over the place that I’ll have fun stumbling upon, but can anybody recommend somewhere to see a decent collection of De Stijl-type stuff? I’m contemplating making the trip to Mondriaanhuise in Amersfoort provided there’s other stuff to do there for an afternoon.
I’m definitely hitting the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house, and I suppose people will yell at me if I don’t at least check out the Master’s stuff, even though that’s not necessarily my cup of tea. Maybe seeing it in the flesh will change my mind.
BTW: Yeah, I’m totally not going to touch the reefer. I’m an absolute, 100% lightweight. The last time I did it, a couple of hits of Kentucky ditch weed turned me into a nervous wreck among friends. Dank stuff in a foreign country by myself is a recipe for absolute disaster.
I’ll just drink a bunch of excellent beer.
Does Heineken taste like something other than horse piss when it’s fresh?
I thought it tasted a lot better, but there might be some perception bias. You might want to hit up the factory tour, which isn’t much of a tour at all but they give you some free beer at the end, and you can usually score extra drink tickets off other tourists who don’t want to drink three whole beers. Great way to make friends and drink for cheap.
We had a great time getting drunk off Heineken, at a small ice-cream shop up the street from our hotel. They had the cheapest beer we found the whole time we were there.
Of course after the first time, I found I couldn’t mix the two.
I was only in Amsterdam once, for two weeks, ages ago.
Finding things to do, and meeting people, was no problem whatsoever.
I was there at the end of August/early September and I do remember it felt like the locals were a bit burned out from having had a busy summer of tourists…but it was an amazing two weeks and, although many memories are a bit blurry, what I do recall was just how much fun it was to basically roam around, find quiet cafes, drink a few beers and settle in.
Man, would I love to join you on this journey! Have fun, report back and just “go with the flow” while you are there.
As for local brews I’d try the Zatte, or Struis from the Brouwerij 't IJ brewery. Both dark with a high alcohol content.
From Dec 14 till March 30 (and it micht be extended) the Ludwig museum in Koln, Germany (3 hours by train from Amsterdam, through a typical Dutch landscape, will have the biggest Mondriaan exposition ever.
http://www.museenkoeln.de/museum-ludwig.(In German)
Amersfoort is a quiet provincial town with not much to do otherwise. Have you heard from the museum Kroller-Muller?