Amsterdam - Walking Tour

I managed to pull myself out of bed at a reasonable time this morning, get dressed, and headed out the door to do the three hour walking tour.  I mismanaged my timing a bit, as I had to be there by 11.15am.  I didn't reach the tour until 11.30am, but fortunately they were still at the square so I was able to tag on.  It started at the Dam Square.  This building was the dutch palace, however the royal family no longer live there, but it's still used for functions and overseas dignitaries....

Down a narrow street an we came to the red light district.  Very nice looking ladies dressed in next to nothing stood in the windows and beckoned to the men.  For obvious reasons, we couldn't take photos.  I believe the starting price is 50 euros for about 10 minutes, and that won't get you very far, so if you intend to travel to Amsterdam for the ladies, make sure you pack your wallets up very thickly with euros!

We were allowed to take a photo of this sculpture, which apparently just appeared one night from nowhere.  No one knows who the artist is, and it sums up the red light district well, with the lady who is anonymous, the male who is anonymous, and the artist also anonymous - the way they like the district to be.

Canal houses...

Bikes - lots of them.  I was told that there are three layers in the canals.  The first layer is the mud/silt.  The top layer is the water, and the middle layer is bikes.  At least 10,000 bikes are dredged out of the canals a year.  If you don't lock your bike to something, someone who has had a bit too much beer looking for fun, will just toss it into the canal!!!

The Amsterdam Waag is a remnant of the former city walls in Amsterdam. Constructed in 1488, it was originally one of the city gates, the Sint Anthoniespoort. When the city wall disappeared, the Nieuwmarkt (new market) was created around it and the weighing scales for the market were placed in the former gate. Today the building houses the Waag Society, an ICT research foundation working in the social and cultural domain, and there is a café/restaurant on the ground floor.

The building carries the oldest plaque in Amsterdam, which reads On 28 April 1488 the first stone of this gate was laid....

Just down from the Waag was the Jewish quarter...  Before the war, the Jewish population was about 10% of the whole of Amsterdam.  After the war it only amounted to 0.1%.  The Dutch were one of the few countries that protested about what was happening to their Jewish friends, they held demonstrations and strikes, unfortunately to no avail.  This area of Amsterdam lay empty for many years, but in the 1960's was rebuilt (and painted bright yellow)...

A measure of how wealthy one was, was how wide your house was.  This house is one of the widest in Amsterdam from a family that made their money making and selling arms to both sides of the war.

This is now the university, but prior to that it housed the Dutch East India Trading Company.

Outside the Amsterdam Museum...

Our guide then took us through a gate or door.  One minute we were on the street which looked like any other with residential housing, yet through this door was an amazing park and really lovely residential area, right in the heart of the city.  It also had a small chapel.  These are called begijnenhofjes and were used only by Catholic women, who were supporting themselves.

We also got taken down an art district....

 The sun even came out at the end....

 And the smallest house in Amsterdam... These people must have been very poor!!!

I also learnt that it was okay for houses to lean forwards, that the houses were designed especially for that.  But it's not okay for them to lean sideways.  Leaning sideways usually means that the houses were structurally damaged, probably had sunk a bit into swamp!!!   The house on the end of the following image definitely has a sideways lean...

And so ended my three hour walking tour of Amsterdam.  I then caught the tram back to Anne's place where she met me, and we proceeded to head to the Airport to get our flight to Prague and the next bit of travel!