family trip to amsterdam with grown children

Want to know a horrifying statistic?

By the time your kids turn eighteen, 90% of the time you’ll ever spend with them is behind you.

I mean, horrifying, right?

Just…horrifying.

Ever the optimist, I counter that horror with a reminder that much of that time we’re no longer spending with our adult children is time they once spent avoiding bedtime by yelling for Halloween candy, hiding under the table to avoid doing math, and complaining about being bored.

In other words, our time with our adult children has the opportunity to be true quality time, enriched and full. Yes, I miss their starfish hands and the way their just-shampooed heads nestled under my chin when we read stories, but life opens up in front of us too and so I’m relishing the simple joy that comes with hanging out with my children when they are no longer children but adults without stinky shin guards for me to keep track of.

All of this hit me full force on our recent trip to Amsterdam. It was the first time we’d traveled as a family of five with all three kids as adults. I suppose Gabe, at 17, is technically not an adult, but as he can order beer in the Netherlands, I say he counts.

And our eldest is an adult in the the adultiest sense of the word. I mean, of course, that Nicolas has his own health insurance. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that traveling with him is traveling with an adult. But when we went to Scotland last year, though he was self-sufficient and never required me to remind him to pack a water bottle, he was along for the ride, not a partner in the travel.

It took Amsterdam to show me who my boy has become and what kind of traveler he is, on his own terms.

If I’d been paying attention, I would have realized it when he checked into the apartment on his and Siena’s arrival in Amsterdam, hours ahead of us. Then directed the two of them to a Thai place he learned about on Reddit. When we arrived, he delighted in sharing his discovery that the invigorating flavors of Thai food are perfect for shaking off travel weariness. After their lunch, the two of them visited a brown bar and hung out, him reading and her drawing, until we arrived.

I was impressed, but that wasn’t the moment that I realized that Amsterdam was bringing us something totally new in my son.

That happened when we walked out of lunch and he casually mentioned that we were just a ten minute tram ride from a brewery in a windmill. I blinked. Noticing, he backpedaled, “I know we just ate, but—“

“No, no,” I course corrected. “I just don’t know how you knew that.”

He shrugged. “I Google.”

Of course he does.

I should have realized when we were on the tram to that lunch and he said, “I’m so interested to see this place. On the map, it looks like it’s surrounded by water. Can it be an island? In Amsterdam?”

He looked it up?

He paid attention to where we were going for lunch and then looked it up on a map and searched for other interesting possible moments? (Incidentally, YES, the restaurant—and there’s more about it below,—is on a park of a island. We crossed a footbridge to arrive and delighted in every step).

This changed the whole dynamic of the trip. Siena at twenty-two and Gabe at seventeen followed his lead and so for the first time, we experienced traveling with three adult children with their own opinions and desires. With the kids enthusiastically interacting with the city, not through us, but through the lens of their own sturdy selves.

Nicolas himself continued to suggest things like picking up Surinamese takeout when we were tired after a day-trip, so we could extend our knowledge of this food we loved on our food tour. He also seemed to have a knack for knowing about interesting watering holes “around the corner.” He stopped into game stores and picked up games to play together in the evening. After the trip, for the first time I made a shared album and everyone dropped their photos in…I loved seeing what moved them. The photo to the right was taken by Nicolas. For the record, it is astounding how many photos my family takes of cats.

Siena led us around the Rijksmuseum, telling us how Night Watch broke the mold for the day. She stopped us from speeding past a row of still life paintings, pointing out that yellow spirals of lemon peels falling off the table were opportunities for Dutch masters to flex their proficiency with light. I love that she uses the word “flex” when describing artists working in the 1600’s.

Gabe took us by the elbow to shepherd us into one coffee supply shop after another; one, apparently, not being enough and we found ourselves wondering about mirrors in the grinder that Siena hypothesized were to give us a bean’s-eye view and Keith told her what it’s actually for (but I can’t remember, because while I love coffee as much as the rest of my family, I’m in it for the sipping, not so much the making, where everyone else tells stories about grind the way other people talk about their prize winning marlin).

Gabe went shooting into the shop of vintage soccer kits, holding up one jersey after another, telling us about the games they were commissioned for. Soccer is something that Gabe added to our family crest, already festooned with travel and Italy and coffee (and mountains and word games, etc etc). Yes, we’ve always followed the World Cup, but Gabe took that once-every-four-year obsession and folded it into a passion for professional soccer (you can read about our experience at a Premier League game here) and competitions around the world, taking us along for the ride until nowadays, I can expect that when I turn my phone on during the Copa America and the Euro Cup (what a time! Two multi-national contests at once!), I’ll find forty-seven texts about own goals and red cards, zinging back and forth across the country.

Gabe also proposed a “sibling movie night”, so we stopped by a market and they stocked up on candy. On the way out, they doubled over with laughter at how anyone watching would assume they were planning to get very, very high. Rather than just wanting to try every gummy candy available in any country (is gummy candy on our family crest???).

Speaking of getting high, I should note that none of my adult kids seemed remotely interested in the Red Light District antics or the Coffeeshops, which are where one buys weed in Amsterdam. Coffee at cafes, on the other hand, were a more than daily requirement for all.

Once upon a time, travel meant moving from herding cats on home soil to herding cats in a new place in a new language and new things for breakfast (speaking of, if you stay in an apartment in Amsterdam, I highly recommend stocking it with bread to toast and butter and chocolate sprinkles—a pretty fabulous Dutch breakfast). It turns out when you travel with adult children, you have the bandwidth to actually enjoy their company. In short, it turns into traveling with friends. Friends where you still pay for everything (well, not totally fair, more than once Nicolas stopped to get water and picked up ice cream for his siblings), but nonetheless, they are invested in the process and, best of all, raise interesting conversations at dinner, like about what it means for Dutch culture that so many people speak English in Amsterdam.

Now, I’ve never been to Amsterdam before, so I’m not at all suggesting you can’t enjoy the city with young children. But I can say Amsterdam is small enough and accessible enough (and the English-speaking aspect removes a layer of complexity) that it becomes an excellent place for young adults to join with and express who they are. For example:

History: Probably the museum hit of the trip (and we went to four) was the Dutch Resistance Museum. Nicolas realized that he’d never been to a World War II museum that was not a holocaust museum. Other than reading historical fiction or historical fact, we had no understanding of what it was like to live on Nazi occupied land from a country that lived that history (it made me want to seek out this kind of museum throughout Europe). We lingered over every display and spent hours talking about it afterwards. When your kids are adults, the discussion becomes pretty meta, like what voice was the museum broadcasting? We found it did an excellent job, actually, of staying out of the way of people’s stories. We learned a ton about the experience of living in a tiny, Nazi-occupied country. It raised many questions for us and gave us much to mull about the levels of tragedy.

One thing we kept thinking about was how the residents of Indonesia and Suriname, governed by the Netherlands, had to make a choice between supporting their oppressors, or their oppressors’ oppressors. Particularly interesting was how after the war, the Netherlands was loathe to give independence to their two colonies, despite international pressure. Fascinating. And as I hinted at before, we really grooved on how Indonesia and Suriname impacted Dutch cuisine (brought to life during our food tour, which I describe below).

Keith and I visited the Anne Frank House, which was more powerful than I anticipated. The kids declined, feeling like they didn’t need to see where she lived to appreciate her story. So they had a leisurely breakfast together. Another upside to traveling with adult kids? You don’t all need to do the same thing at the same time.

Dining: I encourage you to ignore people who say the food in Amsterdam isn’t any good. They don’t know what they’re talking about. My kids love food—insert of sigh of gratification here—though I didn’t know how much until I suggested the Hungry Birds food tour and they leapt at the idea. I said, “It can be long, like four hours.” They shrugged. As long as they’d be eating, they were fine with that. And they relished it all—they totally tasted the difference between the original to Amsterdam stroopwafel and the latecomer with a shiny storefront we’d had the day before. They adored herring. They went nuts for the katsu sandwiches. In short, that food tour was one of the best things we’ve done as a family—it put the history of Amsterdam in a food context, which, let’s be honest, is my favorite context.

My kids are now old enough that a meal in a Michelin-starred restaurant is a delight, rather than akin to flushing euros down the toilet. So we dined at Restaurant de Kas, which a friend told us about, and then wound up being on just about every recommended dining list for Amsterdam. It’s tough to get a reservation, like most things in tiny Amsterdam, so book early. It’s a vegetable-forward restaurant (two of the many dishes included fish, other than that, it was all creative and inspired riffs on what is growing now) in a greenhouse. We are all still talking about it and Gabe ranks it as one of his favorite meals ever.

Spirits: There are some pretty top notch cocktail bars in Amsterdam, our fave being the Flying Dutchmen (the drink of the same name was stellar). Gabe is too young for that bit, but the rest of us loved perusing the menu and Gabe enjoyed his mocktail, but mostly taking in the atmosphere and checking out all the bottles of liquors, many of which we’d never heard of. Gabe wasn’t quite old enough for genever, gin’s ancestor born in Amsterdam, though the brown bar we visited with Hungry Birds had one that was lower in alcohol, so he was able to drink it like a local, hands behind back, lean forward, sip. If you are also interested in genever, we loved our experience at A. Van Wees. The canal side location can’t be beat, and they make their own genevers and are very very happy to tell you all about the history and the process. Besides are instructional flights, we had some wonderful food there—it’s where we first tried ossenwurst, a kind of cross between tartare and sausage that became a thematic hit of the trip.

Art: Nicolas loves art but mostly modern art, Gabe could take or leave art, but we all had a great time at the Rijksmuseum. Without Siena, we wouldn’t have known about the library, and that is well worth checking out if you’re there and love books. Honestly, I could have skipped the Van Gogh museum… As a group of adults, we’ve all seen so much Van Gogh that it all reminds us of posters we’ve seen a zillion times before. That said, I don’t really regret it because we had Siena—she loved learning about Van Gogh’s feud with Gaugin because she hates Gaugin (did you know he had sex with early adolescent girls? And that he referred to the pastoral Polynesian subjects of his paintings as “savages”?). Which again lead to a lot of interesting conversation, mostly about what Van Gogh would have been like to live with, but also how to judge someone’s morality based on the time in which they lived.

Other cities: Traveling with grown-ups means a degree of flexibility and spontaneity that just works with a city as connected as Amsterdam. After we visited the Dutch Resistance Museum, we waited at the bus stop and one of the kids pointed out an old theater across the street, mentioned in the museum as a holding center for Jewish people before they were transported to concentration camps. The bus took us to the train station, where we hopped on a train bound for Utrecht. Unfortunately, the tracks outside Utrecht experienced some sort of unusual disruption so we stopped halfway there and then had to hop a bus the rest of the way. We were hungry for lunch, but all being adults, we coped with the detour just fine.

I’m glad we persisted and didn’t just turn back, because Utrecht is one of those cities that I felt real sadness leaving. It’s beautiful, with the double decker canals that the kids felt sure meant the town looked like a waterpark, and I had a hard time convincing them that it really meant the sides of the canal were terraced, with cafes at the water line, and more commerce one level up.

We enjoyed a beautiful canalside lunch, watching kayaks and boats and koots go by (as a family, we are not bird people, but we really grooved on the water fowl in Amsterdam…especially the ones with babies in tow, like many of the koots), while sipping beer and tipping our heads back to catch the sun’s rays that we never stopped being grateful for—woah, we lucked out with weather. But Utrecht’s beauty and canals didn’t completely explain why the city grabbed me. Actually I couldn’t figure out why I loved it so much. But when we settled into a square for a drink before jumping on the train home, Siena nailed it. It had a definite Italian vibe with the overflowing squares, the people all out and talking to each other, the lack of souvenir shops in favor of art shops and game stores. It feels like a real place.

Love Utrecht.

Then one morning we trained to Haarlem (just a 9 minute trip) where we planned to hire bikes to ride to the North Sea. To make up for all that nice weather we’d been enjoying, the Netherlands decided to open the heavens right as we stepped off the train. Again, traveling with adults means being able to upend plans with ease. We ducked from shop to shop to the fabulous central square, where we decided to enter the cathedral. I had Rick Steve’s notes for Haarlem (we used his walking tour for our first day in Amsterdam to give us the lay of the land— allowing me to play tour guide—and I found them so helpful, I ripped the relevant pages out of his book for each day trip), and so we learned the origin of the phrase “stinking rich” (wealthy people were buried underneath a church’s floor stones, so the living had to deal with the odors of decomposing bodies while trying to think about God), appreciated the monument to engineers (a place like the Netherlands owes it’s very existence to those with an understanding of hydraulics), and played Easter egg hunt with Frans Hals’ grave.

After lunch in a converted church, we breathed a sigh of relief—the promised clearing in the clouds had arrived.

Given we’d been advised NOT to attempt biking in Amsterdam (for reasons which became obvious once we arrived to witness the kamikaze nature of biking there), but wanted to experience some of the beautiful, flat Dutch bike paths, I had planned on us biking through Zuid-Kennemerland with its sand dunes and polders and European bison and more bird action. Unfortunately, the fellow who outfitted us with bikes told us that it was closed because it was underwater. He cheerfully showed us a bike path we could take to the sea and called a place on the water to make sure they were open before loading us up with coupons for the Netherlands’ ubiquitous apple pie.

As I vastly overestimated our stamina, I’m glad we didn’t attempt the park. The forty minutes to the sea was plenty! What a great time we had, beach combing and splashing about.

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Once we returned our bikes, we wandered through a sunlit Haarlem, admiring the windmill and stumbling across a strange dome-like building. At first we assumed it to be an arena, like a concert hall, but then suddenly Nicolas realized it for what it is— a panopticon. Now, in case you are flummoxed, assuming, as I did, that a panopticon is some sort of Greek all-you-can-eat buffet, I’ll hasten to enlighten you with what Nicolas shared. A panopticon is a prison where the control center is in the center of the building, which allows few guards to keep an eye on all inmates, without the inmates knowing if they are being observed. This supposedly would encourage good behavior, as inmates would always behave as they would when under supervision. Panopticons were built all over the world, but only a few remain. This one in Haarlem was built in 1901 and fell into disuse in 2016. Since then it was used as place to house asylum-seekers and now is a hip office space with a coffee bar on the ground level and a movie theater below.

Nicolas has been interested in criminal justice reform since college and in fact is now an implementation engineer for a non-profit doing date science for criminal justice reform measures. So we trailed behind him as he bee-lined to see the inside of a panopticon in real life. If you also are interested in prisons and their association on recidivism and human rights, you may want to do a little research on panopticons.

After a romp around a windmill (are you already getting the sense that the Netherlands are magic?), we settled into a cafe in the now sunny town square. Over drinks—Nicolas got a beer in a flask held upright in a wooden stand—we admired the cathedral and noted the differences between the three Dutch cities we’d visited.

Then came the dinner at De Lachende Javaan we had all been greatly anticipating. Owing to the Netherlands’ involvement in the spice trade via the Dutch East India Company (called the VOC in Dutch), they colonized Indonesia in the 1600’s. The Dutch were inordinately proud of their connection to what they called the Dutch East Indies, and enjoyed regaling visiting dignitaries with feasts showing off the exotic fruits of their colony. These meals were called rijsttafels, which translates to “rice table”—a cavalcade of Indonesian dishes to top rice.

Cavalcade may not be strong enough a word. I’m pretty sure we had at least twenty bowls of delicious side dishes to top our coconut rice. We left stuffed and proud, barely leaving a speck of sauce behind.

An unexpected treat of the evening was the menu—not only spangled with all sorts of evocative things we couldn’t decipher (for the rijstaffel, you just pick which selection you want—vegetarian or including meat or including fish, etc, and then sit back while the bowls start coming) but also included a celebration of the 100 year anniversary of KLM’s first flight. Back then KLM, known as Dutch Royal Airlines, undertook a 22-stage-journey from Haarlem to Batavia (present day Jakarta, but I’m using the old name because if you go to Amsterdam, you’ll see the word Batavia everywhere and it’s nice to know what it means). It was supposed to be 22 days, but wound up being 55—not exactly saving time over the 30 to 40 days it took a ship to make the same journey. Nonetheless, it was marked as a victory, and kicked off intercontinental travel. In fact, it’s the oldest intercontinental flight by an airline still in existence.

Frankly, I wouldn’t have bothered to read all the text when there was all this food to try to figure out, but, again, traveling with people who can read and have interests and read about their interests made this a different ballgame. Gabe, who wants to study aeronautical engineering, inhaled the story of the airline’s journey and asked to keep his menu. I felt lucky to have had space made for this aspect of the Dutch East India Company, to imagine the journey as I loaded up my plate with yet more chicken in spicy sauce.

You see what I mean? Amsterdam has so many facets, so many intricacies, so much of a complicated history, it allows for a family of adults to refract and reflect and consider. It allows just about anyone to dive into what matters to them.

Why is this important?

Well, it can be too easy for us parents to freeze our conception of our children as children. But if what we want is to have a RELATIONSHIP with those children, we need to leave room for those children to grow, to change, to become, you know…adults. No longer is Nicolas our kid who won’t eat vegetables. Now he’s the person in our family who strives to order the most unfamiliar dish on the menu. Siena is no longer the quiet girl we’d leave in a museum corner to sketch, now she’s the one opening our eyes to how to see. Gabe no longer inhabits the role as the patient third kid, wandering in his siblings’ wake. He’s the kid who reads aloud interesting facts about storied airline routes—not in a monologuing, must hold family court while I can, but asking questions for us to reflect on about the nature of colonization and how it collides with Dutch history.

I learned about how my kids think and feel and what matters to them in a whole new way, with Amsterdam as a vivid backdrop. We can relate in ways that are authentic to who they are now, rather than leaning into an understanding that is dated and stale.

Amsterdam allowed us to see our babies as adults—not just stretched out versions of their Kindergarten portraits. We have new family jokes and new favorite foods. We have new insights about ourselves as a family we can use to connect in new ways.

And I am forever grateful.

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