'Twas a week before Christmas, and we found ourselves in the most multicultural city in the world - Amsterdam.
Just short of 1million people, Amsterdam was somewhere we were really looking forward to seeing since so many travellers call in. Amsterdam roughly translates to dam on the river Amsel - a small fishing village in the late 1100's. Through the coming centuries it would become one of the most significant cities in the world during the spice trade and sea exploration. Now its 165 UNESCO listed canals are typically used by tourists rather then spice trading (5 million international visitors annually), and has shaped a pretty unique city which happens to also be the most multicultural in the world!
Amstermdan is in an area referred to as the Low Countries, because as people were beginning to settle throughout Europe, this area was mostly inhabitable due to ocean flooding... around 1000AD as population in the area grew, so did the need for arable land, so the people began to construct dikes (or levy) to obstruct the tidal flooding. Eventually moving the dike further seawards, allowing land to be drained and areas to become developed. Currently below sea level, water management plays a significant roll in the country, water table heights are measured and maintained to ensure stilts/foundations below old buildings don't rot.
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| Dam Square is the historic centre of Amsterdam. The Liberty monument shown above is a memorial for WWII. |
Our first afternoon we locked our bags in the train stations lockers shortly after arriving from Rotterdam and slipped into a sandemans walking tour with around 20 other tourists for their 3ish hour free walking tour. It was well and truly worth it and one of the most informative tours we've been on for the trip. Our host was a polish bloke who's been doing these tours for a while and he spoke openly and was well informed about Amsterdam's history and the Netherlands. We saw all the sights throughout the city centre and learnt a bloody lot during this tour.
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| Central station sits at the bottom of the main central street up to the centre of the city. As pictured, people were everywhere!! from the train station to the centre of the town around lunchtime we were almost shoulder to shoulder. Considering Christmas was just around the corner we thought maybe it all would have been a bit quieter - not the case. |
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| Plenty happening at the red light district! It was actually really close to the main drag and fascinating to walk around. Felt plenty safe enough. |
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| Couple of red light windows and the lads hanging around - it was strange to see almost naked women standing behind windows as you just walk around the streets, you'd see the odd bloke duck into the rooms. |
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| The canal houses were pretty amazing! For some reason it was very popular and typical at the time for wealthy bankers and merchants during the golden era to build tall narrow deep houses which served as houses and sometimes workspaces with direct access to the canal. The door is usually at the top of a couple of steps in case of flooding. Each house has a special beam and pulley system at this top to allow valuable goods back in the day such as spice and cocoa and furniture up to the higher levels. Note in this photo, the smaller brown house is leaning toward to canal, there were several reasons behind this some been pre-empted and others accidental - one such as when goods were swinging from side to side on the pulley system they couldn't do any damage to the windows below. However, because Amsterdam is basically built on a swamp, all these houses have been built on stilts which are driven into the muddy swamp below, over time these stilts would move and sink causing a few of the houses to become off kilter. |
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| Loving these patio fires around outdoor markets! |
Amsterdam light festival via a canal tour - two birds with one stone!
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Rugged up for the canal light tour - such a cold night but fortunately we had a couple of casks of warm glew wein to keep us warm.
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| About 57% of Amsterdammers use their bikes daily, between 12,000 and 15,000 bikes are pulled from the canals each year. |
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| Yerppp! |
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| Two dimensional houses (look 3D) |
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| Originally cultivated in the Ottoman Empire, tulips made there way to Holland in the 1500's. They became very popular in the area in paintings and festivals until the mid seventeenth century when they created the first economic bubble know as Tulip Mania. Rich spice traders etc. created a bit of a tulip fad, which turned into a bit of a frenzy which created a crazy demand for the little bulbs. |
An afternoon in Burgerveen - I'd been put onto a conatact via old college to a couple just a short train ride from Amsterdam in a little village called Burgerveen. Since we had the opportunity we decided to take up an offer to meet a mutual friend, have a sit down in a local Dutch house for coffee and lunch for a bit of chit chat. Jan and Aagtt were lovely hosts for an afternoon, Jan is a successful engineer and we had a ripper few hours talking about some of the products he has designed, and some of the travels they had had throughout the world (include a significant time spent in Muldiura Australia designing a grape harvester and his travels across Siberia via a motorbike).
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| A nice relaxing lunch in a family home for a change. |
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| Finally got to see an old mill pump just near Burgerveen. |
Despite what its known for (drugs and hookers), Amsterdam felt super safe. It has so much to offer with regards to culture,sites and things to do, you could easily spend a week here. One of our highlights was visiting the Anne Frank house. A story I didn't know, it was fascinating to visit and experience what it would have been like to live as a Jew during WWII...
