Whenever I’m abroad and tell people I’m from Holland, nine out of ten people start smiling and say something like this: ’’O my god, I love Holland, I have been to Amsterdam three times. We smoked so much weed and went to the red light district, it was amazing.’’ I mean, that’s all ok but there’s so much more to do in Amsterdam as well as in the rest of the country. Buy an OV-card and use public transport to go to cities like Utrecht, Rotterdam and the Hague. From Schiphol or Amsterdam it takes you approximately 25 minutes by train to get Utrecht and you will get an entirely different experience. It has a similar vibe like Amsterdam, but there are actually Dutch people in the city center 😉 If you are more into small towns, Naarden, a well preserved fortified garrison town that’s well worth it to visit, is only 25 minutes from Amsterdam by train as well.
If you decide to stay in Amsterdam anyway, try to avoid tourist coffeeshops and ‘cheese shops’ (which you can recognize if they are called cheese company or cheese store rather than ‘kaasboer’.