Amsterdam

Vivien and I arrived in Amsterdam on Friday noon April 26/19, not too worse for wear. After picking up our luggage, we took a taxi into the city. OMG….. did not expect the 64€ bill. That’s like $96 CAD. Ouch!!! After arriving at our hotel and a short nap, we took a walk to where we were to catch the river boat the next day. We wanted to see how far we would have to walk with our luggage since the streets were all closed to motor vehicles cuz it was Kings Day. Piece of cake…… we could walk there in under a half hour. Nice that the weather was nice and sunny.

I have never seen soooooo, sooooo many bicycles in my life. Parking lots everywhere of strictly bikes…. some that have seen better days I might add. The picture I took is a 2500 bike park. There is another that is being built will be for 7000.

Jeanette arrived early the next day. We checked out and walked over…..early, to meet her. Good thing! The skies opened up and just poured…..exactly when the weather said it would. We decided we would just hang around the boat. Oh my, aren’t we boring???

8:15 am on Sunday morning we are off to a tour of the canals. There are 165 canals and 1248 bridges in Amsterdam. There are 68 locks on the river between Amsterdam and Budapest.

16 locks in the city…. flushed at least 3 times a week as needed.

700 vehicles drive into water/yr with 30 deaths. Part of getting a drivers licence is getting a lesson in crashing a vehicle into water and getting out safely. That is because of accidents that usually happen on Friday and Saturdays… when there is too much partying. They clean the canals of garbage regularly and sometime they bring up body parts. It is “always” men because when the men are out drinking they urinate into the canals, they fall into canals hitting their heads…..dying.

Some of the buildings are tilting. They are built on pilings on what was marsh.

They definitely need to clean them ASAP. It was filthy, absolutely filthy. Too much partying with the Kings Day holiday.

Oldest brick house …1590. Saw the oldest wooden house in Begijnhof built in 1528….. amazing! (Begijnhof in the past, was “hidden” housing for unmarried religious women from well healed families but who were not nuns. Now it’s for single women over 55).

It’s very lovely, safe and peaceful!

About 1 pm the boat left Amsterdam to start our cruise. We passed by miles of pastureland. We saw windmills, none of which were of the kind the Netherlands is famous for but modern ones.