We had a pretty good flight from Auckland, such that we arrived at 6 o'clock in the morning in Amsterdam feeling not too bad. Our goal was then to stay awake until evening, and go to bed at a normal (local) time. We decided to take the train into town, since it is all very modern and easy to use. Also we had a few hours to kill before we could get into our B&B.
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| Brian at the airport checking the way to the trains. |
It was quiet and uncrowded at the airport, and we were quickly processed and released into the Netherlands. We emerged from the Metro a few blocks from our new home, and wheeled our bags through the near-deserted streets. We started to appreciate the prevalence of bicycles in Amsterdam as we squeezed past the hundreds of them parked along the footpaths, and we soon learned to look out for them before stepping into the cycle lane.
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| Our "street", the Prinsengracht canal. Very peaceful early in the day. |
After our host Maureen arrived (on a bike, of course) and gave us a good run-down on the flat and the area, we still hadn't fallen asleep, so set off to walk across town to the harbour. The harbour is named the "IJ". I don't know how you pronounce that yet (* Update: it's pronounced "ay" as in hay). It was a beautiful day as you can see from these photos.
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| Young tourists chillin' by the canal. |
The buildings in the old parts of the city are typically about four storeys tall and very narrow, because long ago they paid rates based on how wide they were! Most of the city, including these canals, is below sea level, protected by a long-established system of gates and locks. Large pumps are needed to get water out of these waterways and into the sea. Also the ground is basically a soft, wet, swamp, so the houses were constructed on long wooden piles driven into the soft ground. The city is slowly sinking, over the centuries.
The new metro was opened just recently, after a long and difficult engineering project because of that soft wet ground. Some houses beside the line started to fall over and had to be rescued, and the whole project ran well over time and budget.
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| A sample of the ornate gables which distinguish Amsterdam houses. |
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| Tourists can rent boats and cruise around the many canals. |
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| Some buildings lean to the left or right. |
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| The bicycle is king here. There are thousands parked in parking areas like this, and bike lanes everywhere. |
As the day warmed up the streets started to fill with people, until by afternoon the main city was crowded. We can see why there is a bit of backlash against the effect of so many tourists in the city, as they start to crowd locals out of the housing market and make the whole area become a bit of a rat race.
We reached the Central Station, which sits beside the water, where we flowed through with the crowd to emerge at the harbourside - beside the IJ.
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| The Rijksmuseum. |
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| The free ferries which run across the IJ. |
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| The futuristic "Eye", the Museum of Film. Also some sort of floating shrubbery. |
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| A tiny car rode across the harbour on the ferry with us. No room for normal cars, though. |
On the other side we took the ride up the A'dam Lookout, the tallest building in Amsterdam (I think). This is actually not that tall compared to other "tallest buildings" around the world, because Amsterdam is has so little high rise building.
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| We don't look jet-lagged, do we? That's the A'dam Lookout building on the right. |
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| On top of the building are these crazy swings, where you can swing out over the side (for a fee). |
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| By afternoon our canal had become a lot busier. |
We accidentally returned home through part of the famous red light district, which I cannot describe in detail in a family-friendly blog. Of course I did not realise where we were until Sue pointed it out to me.
The day became quite hot, so I think I'll be breaking out my shorts tomorrow! The predicted peak temperature is 27 C.
