As My memory Serves......: The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 5: Channeling the Hearts (Netherlands--Amsterdam)

After Belgium, we entered Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a city full of islands. They have over 160 canals separating the lands into small islands. These islands are connected by bridges, and these Mokummers often travel by bikes (as roads are narrow and bridges might not be able to handle the weight of cars.)

We first got to the rendezvous point for the cruise......fine, it's just on a small boat, nothing fancy. This boat took us through different canals. This city is called the "Venice of the North" for a reason. There are so many canals......too many canals...... It's nice for them to introduce the story of each different canal, but.......they all looked the same after a while...... plus it was raining, so I lost interest pretty fast.

Map of Amsterdam. Look at all the blue "lines."
These are the canals.

This is not the boat we rode, but it's the same size.
Check out all the bikes on top. This gives an idea of how many bikes
there are in this city.

An example of a "boat house."

There ARE some interesting things I learned from this cruise. For example, there are people living on boats. These boats have house numbers like our houses. People have to apply for living on a boat, and the government will have to check if the boat is qualified (Is it safe? How is the waste going to be disposed? Is there enough air flow? Things like these.) This is something I don't normally see in the US (or in California, at least.) I don't know if these boats can move around freely, but it would be awesome if they can move wherever they want. Imagine your distant relatives are coming to your place to live for a week, and you feel obligated to accept because your parents asked you. Well, guess what? Now you don't have to say "I won't be home." You can say "my house will not be here" and just move your boat so that no one can find you. Dude, living on a boat is pretty awesome. Some boats have flowers planted, and some even have a nice balcony on top of the boat. I guess this is also a way to spread the population. Even though Amsterdam is not as densely populated as many major city in the world, the city itself is quite small. Therefore it still feels crowded in the city. With the boats, they created more living space. An effective way to use the water space.

Amsterdam houses are narrow and tall

Majority of houses in Amsterdam are narrow and tall, another way to effectively use space. Since there are too many people and too little space, they have to start making the buildings taller (okay, this is considered tall in old time. They are preserving the outside look for history preservation reason, so they can't really tear everything down and build skyscrapers. Can you imagine Amsterdam full of skyscrapers? Me either, and let's keep it this way) to fit more people. I guess this is a common sight for big cities. You definitely won't see this in Fremont.

The hook on top of the building for furniture transportation.

Another common sight here is the giant hook on top of the building. Many older houses have this. There are two reasons (that I know) for such scene. The first one is that the government used to collect tax from the people based on the size of the door. The bigger your front door is, the more tax you pay. People got mad and came up with a way to counter it. "Well, you charge us based on the size of the door, right? We'll just make it smaller. Now what? Bitch!") Voila! Small doors! But the problem came along. Now it's really hard to move big objects like furniture in and out of the house, so they built big windows and the gable with giant hooks to do it. Who said ancient people are not smart? Even though they claimed that the windows (the ones right under the hook) are bigger than the door, I still don't see it. Doors are in general bigger. The second reason, which is similar to first, is that the the houses are narrow and tall, so the stairs are often windy and narrow as well. This also creates difficulty for furniture transportation. Voila! Hooks! Too bad we didn't get to see it in action. It would be awesome!

Royal Palace at Dam Square

Oh yea, the name "Amsterdam" came from the river named "Amstel" and the word "dam." It simply means "the dam of Amstel" (another similar one is Rotterdam in Netherlands.) There's a plaza called "Dam Square." It's not gigantic, but it's supposed to be the center of Amsterdam. The Royal Palace, the central train station, and many other buildings are all located here. Not too far from Dam Square is the famous (or infamous) Red Light District. Unfortunately I did not take any picture because I was afraid that the hookers are going to charge me for that. I heard they really hunt you down. Still, I can talk about it.

Central Station. It's pretty big. The picture only covers
half of it.

As most of you know, you can pretty much do anything in Netherlands as everything is pretty much legal (not killing, of course.) You can smoke weed, sell drugs, and prostituting. You know how some places have rules like "you cannot drink in public." In Netherlands, rules like that are bull. People would think this would cause more crimes since there's no rule or regulation. Well, that's not what I saw. It might have something to do with the fact that I got there pretty early in the night (around 8 pm) so nothing has really started. The Red Light District is more of a tourist attraction nowadays. Well yea, you see boobs and everything, but there's really nothing out of ordinary. You don't see people fighting outside of a bar (possibly because they are all high at that point), and you don't see people yelling when they're drunk (something Americans do pretty often, and it's quite annoying sometimes). It's quite peaceful, in fact. I saw 3 old Chinese tour groups passing by. They all have gray (or white) hair, and they, with an expression of disgust, took many photos (I know, wtf right?) Compare to those people, our group was so such more awesome. They were asking where things like and what to see in Red Light District.

I talked to a local when I was in a coffee shop there. I asked if it's always been like this. He told me that recently there are more people coming , and this area is really nothing too special to local people. He said that local people see this place as a place to eat and chill, as there are many restaurants here. Many tourists come by every day, and the locals got used to it. It apparently also goes by season. Summer time is the time when most of people come. Well, that makes sense.

We stayed in Amsterdam for a night. The next day, we went to see the symbol of Netherlands, the windmill. This one on the left is in a suburb. It transforms energy from wind to kinetic for grinding wheat and other grains, usually for making flour. After that, we went to the diamond museum that shows you how they select and cut diamonds. Well, it was pretty obvious that they took us here to lure us to buy diamonds, so I lost interest pretty fast. I mean, i can't afford something that's easily over 1000 euro. They do teach you about the 4-C's for diamonds and the levels for each C. If you're interested or want your other half to buy one for you, feel free to research about it. I'm gonna end this post by showing some other pictures I took in Amsterdam, just so I can make this post longer.........