You can get weird in Amsterdam without getting high
Canal boat rides, flower markets, cheese shops, and tours of the recently-reopened Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House populate the to-do lists of most first-time Amsterdam visitors.
For a taste of Amsterdam’s more offbeat side, however, give some of these museums and attractions a try.
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First, let’s get sex and drugs out of the way: In addition to the giggle-inducing Sexmuseum (admission €4, about US$4.45) and the Erotic Museum (€7, US$7.75) in the Red Light District, Amsterdam is home to a branch of a museum exploring the history of hash, marijuana and hemp (€9, US$10).
Feline fans will adore the Cat Cabinet (€7, US$7.75), housed in a historic home on Amsterdam’s Herengrach canal. Created in memory of the founder’s cat — named John Pierpont Morgan, after the U.S. financier — the museum has several rooms filled with paintings, sculptures, photos, posters, playbills, drawings and other purrrrrfectly adorable images of cats.
At the Museum of Bags and Purses (€12.50, US$14), don’t let the plethora of women’s purses fool you: The oldest bag on display is a 16th-century goatskin number with 18 secret compartments that was worn by a man as a belt pouch in the days before clothing had built-in pockets.
Drawing on its collection of more than 5,000 pristine pouches, pockets, clutches, suitcases and bags, exhibits in this museum tell stories of fashion, art, history and politics and include handbags made out of everything from leather and tortoise shell to costly woven fabrics and plastic.
More shrine than museum, the John & Yoko Suite at the Hilton Amsterdam is available for tours (by appointment) when it’s not booked for the night.
Suite #702 is where John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged a week-long “bed-in” for peace in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War. The room has since been updated, with a selfie-friendly bed in the original spot.
With Yoko’s input and approval, the rest of the room contains a guitar, song lyrics, photos and other homages to John and Yoko. A night in the suite starts at €1799 (about US$2,000), but couples who book their wedding at the hotel get to stay in the suite for free.
Visit the animals and fish in Amsterdam’s Artis Royal Zoo, then head next door to Micropia, an activity-filled museum dedicated to the millions of invisible-to-the-naked-eye microbes and micro-organisms that live in our bodies and out in the world.
In addition to finding out about how many microorganisms live in their mouths, on their skin and in their feces, visitors will discover that everything from sewing needles, toothbrushes and sink sponges are perfect breeding grounds for E. coli and other bacteria that become unseen roommates. (Admission: €14, or about US$16. Sanitizing hand gel is, unfortunately, not included.)
Tucked behind the cafeteria at De Nieuwe Ooster, a municipal cemetery in Amsterdam, the Dutch Funeral Museum (€7, US$7.75) offers a tasteful look at death and death rituals. Don’t be afraid to enter the room filled with seven coffins: inside each one is a display explaining how different cultures and religions say goodbye to and bury their dead.
If coffins and death don’t put you off, a visit to a collection of anatomical anomalies and medical malformations put together in the 1800s may be for you.
Not for the squeamish, the cases in the Museum Vrolik (Free admission, donations accepted) at the University of Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Centre contain skeletons of people and animals, sliced-up body parts and jars filled with everything from deformed fetuses and dried penises to a Chinese lotus foot, tattooed skin samples, and examples of “corset livers,” a byproduct of the tight corsets women (and some men) laced themselves into during the 19th century in order to attain a fashionably small waistline.
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