My first experience with Amsterdam! We took the train in on Friday and stayed until Sunday. Public transportation is really well coordinated here in the Netherlands. It isn’t expensive and you can just sit back and watch the countryside pass during the ride. We live just a couple blocks from the train station which is super convenient. The trains are clean and quiet, and the people riding seem normal. 🙂
Amsterdam is an overwhelming combination of history, people, culture and food. The city is located in the Netherlands but prides itself on its cultural diversity. They love the fact that they have a large percentage of Jews, Muslims, Africans, Spanish and Dutch. The crowds of people on the street were a bit much for me, but I also really liked that everyone just exists together and tolerant. Unless someone is walking in the bike lane. The bikers aren’t overly tolerant.
We started on Friday night with a boat canal tour. The tour guide did a wonderful job explaining the reason for the tall skinny homes. When the homes were built in the 1600s, the people were taxed by the width of their property. So they built their houses tall, thin, and hooked together to support neighboring houses. The houses have hooks on ropes on the front, so they could hoist their goods to the top level easily.
Saturday morning we went to the Anne Frank house, my favorite part of the weekend. We had to buy tickets weeks ago because they are sold out well in advance. We toured her father’s office, which is the main part of the building facing the street. Then we toured the annex attached to the back of the office, where Anne and her family spent more than two years in hiding from the Nazis. Her family is just one of thousands that faced horrible injustices during WW2. It was SUCH an interesting tour.
Saturday evening we went on a 2 1/2 hour walking tour. The guide explained architecture, church history, canal history, how the land was shaped and formed by humans, showed the old Jewish quarters, the old city walls, the red light district, and the drug history. By the way, the tour guide corrected my assumptions that marijuana is legal in the Netherlands. On paper, any marijuana is against the law. But the government looks the other way when people possess a small amount of it. This allows stores to sell it and anyone to buy it. Make sense? Not really. But the stores who sell it are required to pay a whopping 58% tax on it.
The picture below on the left is the Dutch Royal Palace. The picture in the middle is the train station from our hotel window. And the picture on the right is one of the 18,000 bikes that are pulled out of the Amsterdam canals every year. They boat around with a claw on a chain and pull them up from the depths.
Below are some interesting stopping points.
Below left: Canal with the oldest church in the city in the background. The tour guide said that Rembrandt painted that very setting in a famous painting, but I haven’t seen the painting yet.
Below middle: One of the original Amsterdam city walls. Henry Hudson set out from this very tower to find North America.
Below right: Can you see how the house is leaning forward, ahead of the house beside it? They built it that way on purpose. It gives them a bit more floor space and allows the outside hook to hoist items to the top without hitting the building. Amazing to me.
That sums up the main points of the weekend. There is so much to do in Amsterdam that we had to pick and choose what to fit into just a couple of days. Maybe we will go back again some weekend to catch a museum or two. I find the history amazing, and how they built these buildings to last thousands of years is beyond me. Hope you enjoyed my brief overview of Amsterdam.
Very beautiful 🥰