Recent Museums: Rembrandt house and Royal Palace

I still have a lot to recap from my time in Amsterdam nannying so I will keep the posts coming even though I left about 4 days ago.


Despite having 3 young kids in tow, we were able to hit up most of the major museums and cultural experiences in Amsterdam, and more!  The trick when you are traveling with kids is just to adjust your expectations. You cannot go into things expecting that you will see as much as you would see as a solo adult. As long as you expect only to last a little bit and see some- sightseeing with young kids is a blast. And then when they last longer than expected you are happily surprised.



A couple of sights we hit up that we didn't expect to be big hits turned out to be some of the kids favorites. One of those was the royal palace. We figured we would just walk through a bit and maybe see some of it. Boy, were we wrong. We spent about 1.5 hours in there (ages with kids!).

They had an incredible kids scavenger hunt were you listened to information on a kids audio guide and then answered questions. The 7-year old was all over it, while the four year old had fun doing it at first and then was just happen to explore the palace rooms with us.





 Not a lot of crowds, lots of space to move around, no need to be really quiet, and plenty to see that is physically interesting to a kid made this a massive win. With an art museum it's harder to engage the kids in what you are seeing.

One of our favorite days for sure.

Another big hit was the rembrandt house. It was popular for most of the same reasons that we loved the palace. Again we spent a lot longer there than we thought we would. It was fun to take a look back in time and see how and what he painted. You toured the kitchen, bedrooms, parlors, and his painting studio. There were a ton of his works on the wall which was a good way for the girls to see his work without spending too much time in a proper museum.

We even got to watch a painting demonstration at the end where they showed us how they made the old fashioned paints. At this point the 4-year-old was done, but I just held her while we all listened. Actually, this was so great that I would recommend it to anyone coming to Amsterdam. It was really neat.

So that is some museum hopping with little kids in the dam. Just remember- adjust your expectations, and always bring snacks.