JANUARY 2020
It’s no secret that I love lights, so I am always pretty excited when the holiday season starts. Having completely missed holiday season due to our travels in South-America, I decided to catch up on some holiday spirit and visit Amsterdam Lights. Eindhoven, the city where I live, also organizes a yearly light festival called Glow, which I love to visit each year. 2018 was the first year that I visited Amsterdam Lights and I loved the magic of the light installations with the background of Amsterdam’s canals. Glow usually is a more technical and spectacular light festival, but it is hard to beat the combination of cool light installations and the historic city center of Amsterdam. If you are quick you can still visit this edition until January 19 2020.
Practical information
Amsterdam lights is held since 2012 and usually takes place from December until half January. This gave me the opportunity to bring a visit to the 2019-2020 edition after I came back from traveling. In South-America the holiday season doesn’t start until late and the Christmas decorations are less overdone than in Europe and the U.S. I absolutely loved celebrating Christmas in 30 degrees Celsius, but I will make sure I am in Europe next Christmas.
You can visit Amsterdam Lights by boat or do a self-guided walking tour. It is quite a search to find some information on doing the walking tour, but the official website does have a map that indicates where you can find all the light installations. The official website is a horror to navigate though and seems mainly directed on selling boat tours. If you wanted to walk the 2019-2020 edition you had to walk for 6,3 kilometers, passing about twenty artworks, which will take you about two hours including photo stops. The best time to visit is dependent on whether you like crowds or not. Last year we visited in between Christmas and NYE and the route was absolutely packed with people visiting Amsterdam Lights. This year we visited early January and it was super quiet, with only four people admiring the artworks at once. Obviously it is easier to take pictures when it is less crowded, but I also found it less atmospheric. In January there are no stalls that sell food or drinks along the route and lots of houses have already removed their Christmas decorations.
Is it necessary to do a boat tour for Amsterdam Lights?
I personally have never done a boat tour for Amsterdam Lights and don’t feel the urge to book one. However it is good to know that some of the light installations are built to be seen from a boat, so these installations will have less of an impact when walking by. For example, this year there was one installation that imitates the cracking of ice when a boat sails through the installation. The official website offers links to different sort of boat tours, you can decide if you also want to have dinner on the boat or just do a sightseeing cruise. Prices differ greatly depending on the services that you buy. I like to have the flexibility of determining my own pace to see the light installations and take some time to take pictures, which is very difficult when you are on a boat. However if you are a first-time Amsterdam visitor, I would recommend taking a boat tour through the canals, so doing that during Amsterdam Lights would be the perfect combination.
Golden hour in Amsterdam
I made sure we were in Amsterdam a little bit before sunset, so we had some time to enjoy golden hour and watch the sunset over the canals. I particularly find the canals near the Hermitage museum a good spot for sunset watching, but “De Negen Straatjes” often have a really colorful sunset as well during this time of the year.
Other recommendations
Usually Amsterdam Lights has some installations close to the Hermitage museum. In the backyard of the museum you will find restaurant “Dignita Hoftuin”, which was recommended to me via a friend from Amsterdam. The restaurant has the perfect location to soak up some Christmas vibes as it is an open space with large windows in a garden decorated with lights. Luckily, my mother and I also really liked the food. The restaurant has an all-day-brunch concept, and offers light and healthy meals perfect for an early dinner (the restaurant closes at 6PM).
If you like ice skating, there is an ice rink at the Museumplein from November until late January. The ice rink is the perfect activity for an afternoon in combination with Amsterdam lights. You get to skate with the Rijksmuseum as a backdrop and the whole area is nicely decorated and super cosy. Hielke and I went ice skating here last year and had a lot of fun despite of the crowds.
You can also check out my other blogpost about Amsterdam.