Day 42 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Arriving into Amsterdam is unlike an other city where you travel around two hours along the Amstel River before you reach the dock.  We also have to negotiate one of two locks.  It's an enjoyable trip as we entered the river around 8am and docked at 10am so we got to see an interesting landscape.  I have included a photo of when we re-entered the lock at departure.  

Philip and I did different tours today.  I did "Local Food Hopping & Culture" and Philip "Bike through Dutch Landscapes like a Local".  Philip thoroughly enjoyed his bike ride that was around 15km.  There are only three working windmills these days but he got to see them.  They are not economical anymore.  Here are a few of his photos…..

My tour was okay - just.  It was a paid tour and I expected there to be a lot more food hopping than there was.  We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where we were served a plate of mash with two crumbed balls filled with an unrecognised filling (maybe mushroom) and two slices of kabana.  This was accompanied by a glass of beer followed by a shot of an also unknown spirit that was very fiery.  The restaurant made me feel slightly claustrophobic as we were packed in very tightly.  I was pleased to leave and start our walking journey.

Our walking tour took us along the Canal Ring where we walked over four canals.  There are all lovely and look so peaceful as the boats glide gently along the canals. At every canal the bridges are lined with bicycles and intermittently you will see flowers adorning the rails.  There are table & chairs set up along some of the canals for a bit of people watching.

We stop at Ann Frank house and I marvel at how two families survived as long as they did in the top floor of the house.  They had to be perfectly quiet for eight hours of every day which in itself would take an enormous amount of self discipline.  I have just finished reading Ann Franks diaries so it was interesting to see the conditions that she described during the war when the Nazi's hunted down the Jewish people. The house is the middle one.

Our walk continued to the town square where protesters were holding a rally so it was full of people.  It was really hard to hear our tour guide amongst all the noise so I can't tell you too much about this square.  It is not as attractive as the ones that we saw in Belgium.

Just past the square, we stop at a shop for a cheese tasting.  I couldn't resist buying a wheel of Dutch Edam, our favourite cheese, and also some tapenades and cheese biscuits. 

The walk continued through Noorderkerk, la Westerkerk and the 9 Streets that I would have liked to stop at for a bit of retail therapy, but no such luck (or maybe it was better for the pocket :-) We also head into some hidden courtyards that are all private residences.  I felt a little bit like a sticky beak…...

The architecture is quote different to anywhere else in the world with its tall narrow buildings.  This is the narrowest we saw with just a single room width…...

And this is the crookedest.  It's a bit hard to tell from the photo but the top leans out considerably.

I loved the bright red shutters on these buildings…..

Our last food stop was a chocolate tasting.  I am not a great chocolate lover (give me savoury any day!) and these were too sweet for my taste, but everybody else in the tour group seemed to enjoy them.

Our tour took around five hours and the description said that there would be around 1 mile of walking.  Turned out we walked six kilometres.  I will leave you with these photos of some interesting street scenes.