Amsterdam, The last of our European Travels

First things first...nothing could bring me down the day we left for Amsterdam. I got my flight changed and will be able to make commencements now!! I'll land and will have to be at school for the ceremony 12 hours later! And, there's a small world connection tied to this! So, the random person from the airline that helped us saw that I was flying to Minneapolis and mentioned that he had friends in Hudson and asked if I knew where that was. A little shocked, I told him that was my home town and recognized the last name of his friends--crazy! From there, we chatted about the weather differences and how his son wants to live near Hudson when he gets older. This was the start to our trip. We left for Amsterdam, which is the capital of the Netherlands Thursday night and spent a 4 day weekend there.

Our hotel was right next to the Heineken Brewery but unfortunately it's closed until the summer! :(


Amsterdam was founded when a couple of fishermen happened upon the River Amstel and eventually built a dam there. Inhabitants of the area were called Amstel-dammers, which quickly changed to Amsterdam and it stuck! There are tons of canals throughout the city...somewhere between 80 and 160 (I think the canal tour driver told us different numbers) but as you can see from the map below, there is a lot of blue!

Here's a shot of one of the many canals by our hotel:

And the shoe boat :)

Our first day there (Friday, since we got in late Thursday night) we walked around town by the flower market and to the Museum of Medieval Torture. It's something many old European cities have but have never actually been to, so he was our chance.

This is a bad musician's flute. It was worn around the neck and the fingers were clasped down unto the flute.

This one wasn't the clearest as to how people were tortured on here, but something like being pulled across here.

Behold, the chair of pins!

This one is just gruesome...neither of us could look at it without wincing.

Although that one was bad, it wasn't the worst of them...I'll let the expression speak for itself :/

Guillotine!


So, that was a great intro to the city (sarcasm). I wrote a paper on Amsterdam for one of my classes so it was good to see the history, both good and bad. But I don't think either of us need to go to a medieval torture museum again for quite awhile!

Here's one of the many churches among all the skinny houses:

And a bell tower near the Anne Frank house which I just figured out from looking at my other pictures.

So many of the houses lean to one side or the other because they are so old and rather than tear them down when they started sinking concrete reinforcements would be installed to stop the sinking.

We walked along this canal many-a-times as it lead us closer to the train station and was part of the center of town. Surprisingly they don't have rails along the canals in most of the places...therefore you can find almost anything in the canals from bikes to cars. Not too long ago low-lying rails were placed in front of parking spots so cars wouldn't drive into the canals.

This bridge has the seal of Amsterdam on it. The red represents the city, the black is the River Amstel and the three crosses represent the three negative things the city has gone through including Plague, Fire, and one other thing that brought harm the city at one point but unfortunately I misplaced my notes, I'll check up on it though and post it soon.

Here's a typical shot of the houses that line the canals. We went on a canal tour while there and found out that the reason houses are so skinny is because in the 17th and 18th centuries when houses were being built, owners were taxed on how wide their house was. Hence why they are all so skinny and have even skinnier staircases! Also, the gables are all so different because again the the 17th and 18th centuries gables were used to define a house rather than a house number.

Bridges like this used to be manual, but now they're hydraulic, and hard to open any other way.

Here's a shot down Reguliersgracht Canal, you can see (well almost in this picture) there are 7 bridges along it from this point on.

More of the leaning houses, which Amstel-dammers call Dancing Houses.

I believe this is a science learning museum but I really just liked the composition of the shot.

And, here we are on the boat before getting off. The sun was shining, but it was still a little chilly. Probably high 50s, so we weren't complaining!

This tower used to be part of the original wall of the city allowing guards at the top to see out for miles while watching for intruders. After the city expanded there really was no use for it so rather than tear it down, the city added the clock part to the tower.

Here's the Amstel Hotel...reallly expensive suites and apartment...it doesn't even rent out rooms! But, you do get a stupendous breakfast, according to our guide.

On our second to last night we discovered a great little plaza are near our hotel filled with shops and bars. On the way we passed this museum. I love how things are lit up at night! We ate in the square for our last night there at a really good steakhouse where we got a free drink from coupons at the hotel!

And after digesting the food a bit we had a great snack of gummies and beer...check out papa smurf haha!

Behind us in this picture is the Amsterdam palace, which actually, just today I found out that the Netherlands has a Queen. Who would have thought; I doubt this is where she lives though.

And one last visit to the Anne Frank house. I haven't read her diary, but now that I've been here, I wouldn't mind picking up a copy. It was a great museum taking us through the hiding place of the family including an interactive part at the end where we learned more about WWII.

Hmm, although we were here the longest, this is the place we took the least amount of pictures at oddly enough. Among the things posted here we mostly walked around, shopped for the best deal on sweatshirts (Nicki and Alex :), and checked out the Red-Light District happenings. It was quite interesting seeing women standing almost naked in windows waiting for customers. Mostly, it was just drunk men standing outside the windows but we saw an age range from us up to people in their late 60's strolling along the canal. I'm glad we saw it (it was actually Jordan's second time, he and his mom had a layover in Amsterdam on their way home from their Italy trip), but once was enough!