This is for you if you would rather spend them well than spend them standing in a line for a underwhelming experience. If you like the novelty stuff, the giant waffle with candy on top, the photo outside the ice bar, keep enjoying it. I mean that.
Most Amsterdam tourist traps are not scams. But these are places put in place for tourists specifically, and have nothing to do with a local Dutch experience. Like the dressed up Stroopwafels at insane prices, €15 is normal now, but the real good ones cost only €3. Or dressed fries with cheese? So NOT Dutch. Or pretty, but low quality cheese stores, or flower bulbs. No, no… no.
Food is where most Amsterdam tourist traps live
Start with stroopwafels, whoever I ask, everybody is unanimous about it. The shops in the center sell one waffle with toppings for €10 and up, and the line outside is part of the marketing. The topping is what you are paying for. The waffle underneath is ordinary.
Plenty of people will tell you to buy a pack of Stroopwafels at the supermarket instead. I would not. Go to a market: Albert Cuyp or Lindengracht. Around €3 to €4, made in front of you, still warm. Fresh beats a bag every time. But get them plain!
The souvenir cheese shops work the same way. Wheels in the window, free cubes on sticks, staff who speak four languages, prices no Dutch person would pay. And low quality masked by salt, artificial colors, and flavors. I see people walking out with those bags and it bothers me, because the cheese in this city is very good and they missed it. This is where you buy good cheese: De Kaaskamer in the Nine Streets, Kaasland on Haarlemmerdijk, or Fa. H. Wegewijs on Rozengracht.
Then there are the small brightly lit shops in the center that look like supermarkets and are not. Nothing has a price on it and a bottle of water is €3 if you’re lucky. The real chains are Albert Heijn (blue), Jumbo (yellow), Dirk (red), Aldi, or Lidl. And one of them is usually a few minutes’ walk from wherever you are standing.
⤷ More on this: 10 Ways to Save Money in Amsterdam
Walk past any restaurant with someone standing outside
If a person with a menu steps toward you, keep walking. It is the most reliable rule in this city. A restaurant that fills up on its own reputation does not need somebody on the sidewalk.
The same rule catches a whole category: the “Argentinian” steakhouses on the tourist streets are rarely run by Argentinians, and the Italian places next door are rarely run by Italians. The name is a genre, not an origin, and the food is often mediocre, I’m trying to stay nice here.
When I walk past those terraces and look at what is on people’s plates, I feel so sorry for them. Somebody flew a long way, has five dinners in this country, and is eating a gray steak under a heat lamp. There is very good food here and they are standing 200 meters from it.
⤷ Read next: Traditional Dutch Food and What to Order
The flower market sells bulbs that will not grow
The floating flower market on the Singel appears on every list of traps, and the lists are right. It is mostly souvenir stalls now. The problem is not what the bulbs cost. It is how old they are.
Fresh bulbs are only sold in fall. Buy in April and you are buying last season’s stock if you’re lucky there, which is why so many people plant them at home and get nothing, or get plain red tulips instead of the picture on the packet. If you buy anyway, check the production year printed on the package. It should be the current year. And blue tulips do not exist, whatever the photo shows.
If you want tulips for your own garden, order from a Dutch grower who ships to your country. If you want to see tulips, come late in April and go out to the fields.
Skip the Damrak entirely
The Damrak is the first street you see when you walk out of Centraal Station, so most visitors assume it is the main event. It is the worst street in Amsterdam. Fast food, currency exchange, souvenir shops, and fries stands with a photo of the fries hanging above them, worse they’re hyped on TikTok and Instagram so the lines are huge. But this is NOT where to get the best fries. That’s Vleminckx (Voetboogstraat 33),
You never have to walk Damrak and Rokin. I have never once taken a guest down it. Cut west to the Singel or east to the Oudezijds Voorburgwal and walk to Dam Square that way. Maybe a few minutes extra, but a completely different city. The good streets sit directly behind the bad one, which is the pattern for most of the center.
Shops that charge admission and call themselves museums
Amsterdam has a category of small attraction that is a gift shop with a few rooms attached: the tulip museum, the cheese museum, some sex museums. You pay to walk a corridor of display boards and leave through the merchandise.
Some people enjoy them and there is no harm in it. But if you have one museum slot in a day, I would never spend it here. Visit the main museums like the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh. Or if you’re up for a smaller museum Our Lord in the Attic, Rembrandt House, or the Canal House museum are all great choices.
Skip the tourist traps.
See the real Netherlands.
Plan your trip step by step, with practical tips landing in your inbox right when you need them. Save time, and skip the mistakes.
The attractions you could visit in a big city near home
Amsterdam Dungeon, Ripley’s, Madame Tussauds. These are franchises, and the same shows run in a dozen other cities. Madame Tussauds is the best made of the three and it is not a bad afternoon if you already like that sort of thing.
But you traveled a long way and your days here are limited. I recommend to spend them on things that only exist in this country. A canal house built in the 1670s. A brown café with a drink and Bitterballen. Or see the Rijksmuseum at opening. There is a wax museum near almost everybody.
The Ice Bar is plastic sculptures in a cold room. Available in any big city.
Choose the right canal boat, not the big one
A canal cruise is worth doing. The type of boat decides whether you enjoy it. The large glass-roofed boats seat a hundred people or more, play recorded commentary in several languages, and run the same loop all day. You see the canals through a window with somebody’s head in front of it. The smaller open boats take 10 to 15 people and come with a skipper who talks to you and answers questions. They cost more per person, but I book those instead, every time. How often will take one? My advice do it right.
⤷ this is the canal tour I recommend to book for most people
Things that borrow the Amsterdam name
“Amsterdam Castle” is Muiderslot, a good castle about 15 kilometers (9 miles) outside the city. “Amsterdam Beach” is Zandvoort, a real beach with white sand, roughly half an hour by train, and not in Amsterdam.
Old Amsterdam cheese is a brand name, not a place and not a tradition. Plenty of people like it, but it is not the aged farmhouse Gouda the packaging suggests, and the same money buys better at the three shops above.
Use a yellow Geldmaat, not the ATM in the souvenir shop
The Euronet machines in tourist areas charge high fees and put a poor exchange rate on the screen. The yellow Geldmaat machines are the shared Dutch bank network and the ones locals use. You will find them across the city, including inside many Albert Heijn stores.
One more thing, and it applies at every card terminal in Europe. When the screen asks whether to charge you in euros or in your own currency, always choose euros. Choosing your own currency hands the exchange rate to the machine, and it is never set in your favor.
Not traps, but not what people expect
Three places get called tourist traps in every comment section, and I do not think the label fits any of them.
The Anne Frank House is a serious place and it is worth your time. Book well ahead, because tickets are timed and released on a schedule. If it is sold out, or if the visit leaves you wanting more, the Corrie ten Boom House in Haarlem tells a related story in a much quieter room. But similarly difficult to get tickets.
The Heineken Experience is a brand tour and it is open about that. If what you want is Dutch beer, a brown café or one of the city’s small breweries gives you more for less. But if you’re a fan of the brand why not?! They give you free beer as part of the experience. I enjoyed the Coca-Cola experience in Atlanta. No judgement.
The Red Light District is a neighborhood where people live and work. Walking through it is fine and interesting also. But it is also rowdy, especially during weekend nights, and sleazy. So come with the right expectation. For a truly interesting tour I recommend booking with this company, they offer this tour from the human perspective and let you meet a real sex worker.
The biggest Amsterdam Tourist Trap Are Social Media Reels
Yes, Instagram. TikTok, Facebook Reels. They feel like you’re cheating finding all these great things to do in the city. Save the reel. Itinerary done. Unfortunately, no. Often what you created is your own list of traps without you knowing it.
Start with how those videos get made. A restaurant, a shop, or an attraction pays a creator to come, eat, film, and post. The video says “I found this incredible little place.” What often happened was a media buy from places that either did not existed before, or were mediocre at best and locals skipped them. Being popular in your feed and being good are two unrelated things.
The second problem is worse, even when the place is real. Somebody films a small café that was good because a few people knew about it. Six weeks later there is a line down the street. The regulars stop coming. Whatever made it worth filming is gone by the time you arrive, and what you are standing in is a line for a memory of it. Multiply that by every neighborhood and you have the overtourism argument this city is having right now.
A folder of saved reels feels like an itinerary. However it’s often a list of copy cats at best, and how much their owners spent on marketing at worst. Follow it and you will spend your days in lines inside the busiest two square miles in the country. While missing the true travel experience.
Ask anybody what they remember from a trip six months later. It is almost never the famous thing. It is the market seller who explained what he was doing, the hour on a bench by a canal at 8 a.m. before the city woke up, the meal in a place with no English menu. None of those trend, and nobody is paying to promote them.
I am not asking you to skip the well-known places. Go to the Rijksmuseum. Take the canal boat. But decide which parts of your days you are handing to a feed, and keep a few hours for nothing in particular. Those hours are often where the trip happens.
I can help
This comes up in almost every members’ call: somebody has 40 saved reels and four days, and we spend twenty minutes cutting it down to a trip that works. If you want that kind of check before you book anything, the membership is a live call with me once a month plus email questions in between.
⤷ Join the Hidden Holland membership
FAQ about Amsterdam tourist traps
What should you not do in Amsterdam as a tourist?
Do not eat on the Damrak, do not buy cheese or stroopwafels in the souvenir shops, do not buy tulip bulbs in spring, and do not follow anybody who tries to walk you into a restaurant. One more: do not rent a bike on your first morning if you have not cycled in traffic recently.
Are there areas to avoid in Amsterdam?
Not for safety. Amsterdam is a safe city to walk in, day and night. The area to watch is your wallet: the strip from Centraal Station down the Damrak to Dam Square, plus Leidseplein and Rembrandtplein, is where prices are highest and quality is lowest.
Is the Amsterdam Dungeon worth it?
Only if you already know you enjoy that kind of attraction and you have time to spare. It is an international franchise rather than something particular to Amsterdam. With three days in the city, I would spend those two hours and that money elsewhere.
Are visitors still welcome in Amsterdam?
Yes. The frustration you read about is aimed at volume and behavior, not at visitors. Stay out of the bike lanes, keep the noise down at night in residential streets, and spread yourself beyond the same six streets, and you will be treated well.
Is Amsterdam itself a tourist trap?
No, but the small slice of it that most visitors see behaves like one. The pressure sits inside the canal ring between Centraal and Leidseplein. Walk 15 minutes out of it, or take a train 20 minutes to Haarlem or Utrecht, and the country changes.
Where should I buy stroopwafels and cheese in Amsterdam?
Stroopwafels: a market stall on Albert Cuyp or Lindengracht, around €3 to €4, made fresh in front of you. Cheese: De Kaaskamer in the Nine Streets, Kaasland on Haarlemmerdijk, or Fa. H. Wegewijs on Rozengracht.
A final note from a local guide
Stop treating the first street you see as the city, and stop letting a social media feed decide your days. Nearly everything on this list is a place that stopped being for locals and started being for photographs.
Walk one street further. Eat where nobody is outside waving at you. Leave a few hours unplanned. You will spend less and come home with more.
If you want someone to look over your plan before you book, that is what the monthly members’ call is for.
⤷ Join the Hidden Holland membership
If this article helped you plan with more confidence, and you’d like to say thanks, you can always buy me a coffee. It’s never expected, but always appreciated.
