A blog about (hidden) Amsterdam
A blog about (hidden) Amsterdam
One of the main goals of Badass Tours is to empower people. We want everyone who’s been pushed to the side to feel seen and heard, throughout history and today. It was only natural that we should develop Self-Curated Walking Tours.
Our guided group tours are a wonderful way to discover Amsterdam and the incredible people who made the city what it is. Elyzabeth is a passionate and knowledgeable guide, and you’d be hard-pressed to stump her with any obscure questions you’re curious about. Time and again, we’ve heard from guests about their emotional connection to Elyzabeth’s storytelling. But we also know that a guided tour isn’t for everyone.
For those who are hard of hearing, picking up sporadic words among the noise of trams, bike bells and passers-by won’t be a fulfilling experience. Others may find it difficult to keep pace with a group and opt out of perpetually trying to catch up. There’s a whole range of reasons neuroatypical people may not enjoy a tour, including sustained focus and social interactions with strangers. And if you’re like me, sometimes you simply prefer to explore on your own. And so, the Self-Curated Walking Tour was born.
We knew we needed the tour to be accessible, so we planned on all stories to be in both text and audio formats. And we quickly found this wasn’t just for differently-abled travelers. Many guests would prefer the option to listen to the stories, freeing them up to take in their surroundings and follow their curiosity at the same time.
So far, we were on track to create a solid self-guided walking tour: we direct you to one location; you read a story about the location and someone interesting there; we then direct you to the next location and repeat the process. But here’s where we ran into a roadblock. There are just too many impactful people that we wanted to share, and there’s only so much time that you can spend walking the city on a tour. How could we possibly narrow it down? And that’s when it hit us.
Why not let you choose what people you want to learn about? We set the direction and the stops along the way, providing a foundational overview of the city. Then at each stop, you choose from four unique badasses which ones you want to learn about, thereby curating your own experience. If you have the time and the curiosity, you can learn about as many as you want at each stop, getting a perspective on Amsterdam like never before.
The Self-Curated Walking Tour will meet the needs of travelers and locals alike who want to explore in their own way. Go at your own pace. Take breaks in between and do something else. Explore the city at 3am. Return to stops to uncover more badasses or to rediscover your favorites.
So, if you want that special, guided experience, sign up for one of our group or private tours. And if you’d rather take to the streets on your own, our Self-Curated Walking Tour is here for you.
Badass Tours takes you to special sites in historic Amsterdam to tell stories of individual women who fought, wrote, calculated, and led to chart their course through Amsterdam’s This chaotic and complicated past.
Forget canals and piles – Amsterdam is a city built on stories. Some of its most interesting, though, have been overlooked by history. We stroll through the spacious Plantage neighborhood and stop to hear the untold stories of Amsterdam’s layered history.
When the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage, four couples were married by the Mayor of Amsterdam. But did you know that the city’s LGBT+ history stretches back to the medieval ages?