Amsterdam is full of tall, narrow houses with big windows looking out on the sidewalk and steeply angled roofs.
I arrived in Amsterdam at around 8 sunday morning (1am mountain time), and wandered the nearly empty streets until my hotel room became available.
Amsterdam is full of tall, narrow houses with big windows
looking out on the sidewalk and steeply angled roofs.
Like my mom, the dutch tend to keep bookshelves near the
windows, along with ideal seating for cats.
I can't imagine what I was standing in front of that looked
cooler than this bridge, but most people seemed more interested in
taking pictures from the bridge than of it. The old part of the city
is built around concentric U-shaped canals. Near central station, the
canals extend to the south. But eventually, they start to curve,
providing ample opportunity to get lost.
My room on the forth floor of the Rokin hotel. Cozy.
The view from the hallway window.
These stairs are as steep as they are narrow. By keeping to
the inside half of the stairwell, it is possible to climb them like a
ladder. Having seen my room, it was time to continue wandering in
search of import-only CDs, deoderant, toothpaste, and shaving cream.
The streets had been slowly filling up all morning and continued to
fill up in the afternoon. The streets became completely full of
people around 4pm (8am mountain time). Things probably calmed down
once the shops started closing at 6, but I didn't stay up to find
out.
Monday morning I headed south to the museum district in search of the local ticket outlet (AUB) and copy of a free, english-language entertainment guide called Shark. I didn't find either. After being baffled by the curving cannals and wandering around lost for a while, I ended up at the beginning of Singel
Singel 7 is one of three houses that claim to be the smallest
in Amsterdam. It is 1.01 meters wide at the door, but a whopping 5
meters wide further back. Another house is only 2.1 meters wide
throughout. The Poezeboot (a cat shelter in a houseboat) is just
across the street, but I spent the majority of the afternoon sitting
on a park bench, watching the long canal boats make impossible left
turns.
From my bench, I could look left and see a tree-lined canal,
old houses and tiny one-way streets. To the right, I could see a main
street, the intercity railroad tracks, and a gleaming high-rise
hotel. After a quick search for the exact border between quaint and
modern Amsterdam, this was the best I could find.
wget -rp to finish.