We stuck to my preferred cost-effective method of travel: overnight bus. The 9-hour ride there was a little less comfortable than usual, though, since the bus had no bathroom and I had to sit next to a stranger who wound up falling asleep on my shoulder. To top it off, we arrived early in Amsterdam... at 4:45 am, an hour before the first train into the city. This was going to be a long day.
But after the trip's inauspicious start, things quickly got better as we headed into the city and joined a walking tour. We learned that Amsterdam started out as a humble fishing village in the 12th century before becoming a hugely important port city home to many wealthy merchants. The famous canals were dug in the 17th century for water management and defense purposes. Although almost half of them have been filled in over the years, the city still boasts 65 miles of waterways, most of which are lined by expensive canal houses.
 |
| The Beurs van Berlage, built at the turn of the 20th century, was once the home of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, which is the oldest stock market in the world |
 |
| In front of the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, which was built in the 17th century and is still used by the Dutch monarchy today for the occasional royal reception. When it was completed, it was the biggest secular building in the world |
 |
| The somewhat suggestive National Monument honors the casualties of WWII. A woman with a child in her arms (representing new life) stands above four chained figures (representing the suffering endured during the war) |
 |
| Amsterdam's main city square, Dam Square |
 |
| Something we noticed right off the bat is that many of the city's houses are extraordinarily crooked. Apparently this is due to the soft sediment that the city is built on, which has shifted over time. The black vertical lines on the house on the right are braces meant to keep it from tilting further |
 |
| The Begijnhof is one of the most peaceful corners of the city. Just like the Beguinage in Bruges that I saw, it was once home to pious Beguines (single Catholic women who acted like nuns but didn't want to live in a convent), beginning in the 1300s |
 |
| Most of the original wooden houses were destroyed in fires and rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries... |
 |
| ...but this restored house (Houten Huys, or Wooden House) dates back to about 1528 |
 |
| The last Beguine died in 1971, but the courtyard's residents are still exclusively women |
 |
| Another crooked house |
 |
| The city's canals are on the UNESCO World Heritage list |
 |
| This is another one of Amsterdam's oldest houses, built in 1590 for a merchant. The city's houses are all built out of stone since fires kept ravaging the city's wooden structures |
 |
| Our walking tour took us to the Red Light District for the first time. An anonymous artist installed this sculpture (without official permission) in 1993 |
 |
| Even though we were there at 10:30 in the morning, some prostitutes were already in their windows, scouting for customers. Despite the racy businesses located throughout the Red Light District, the area is one of the oldest and most beautiful parts of the city |
 |
| More crooked houses |
 |
| De Waag, or the Weigh House, a 15th-century building on Nieuwmarkt square that was once part of the walls of Amsterdam |
 |
| The Oostindisch Huis is the former headquarters of the mighty Dutch East India Company, the world's first multinational corporation, and was built in the early 1600s |
 |
| The Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) was built in the 15th century. It has hosted the inauguration of all Dutch monarchs since 1814 (most recently in 2013) |
 |
| Inside the Nieuwe Kerk |
 |
| The pretty Magna Plaza shopping center was built as a post office in the 1890s |
 |
| Inside Magna Plaza |
 |
| All over Europe, completely random signs will suddenly be in English, such as the "Shopping Center" sign here |
 |
| The annex in this very house is where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary while hiding with her and another Jewish family to avoid deportation to a Nazi death camp. It is now a VERY popular museum. During the day, the lines are over two hours long. Amy and I waited until the evening to go in, and still waited over an hour. But it was worth it! We saw the original bookcase used to hide the door to the annex and walked through the very same rooms as the Franks and Van Pels once did. The annex wasn't actually that cramped. But staying there for two years without ever so much as touching the curtains on the windows would be very frustrating. For the uninitiated, or for those who forgot, they were betrayed to authorities by an unknown individual in 1944. Everyone who had hidden in the annex except Otto Frank, Anne's father, died in the camps |
 |
| The Keizersgracht and Homomonument on the left. The Homomonument commemorates all gay men and lesbians who have been subjected to persecution because of their sexuality. The pink triangular shape of the structure refers to how gay prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were identified by a pink triangle on their jackets |
 |
| Remember the New Church? This is the Oude Kerk, or Old Church. Built in 1306, it is the city's oldest building. What's remarkable about it is that it is in the middle of the Red Light District. Just steps away from the entrance are coffeeshops and prostitutes in windows, all on the same plaza as the church. During Amsterdam's heyday, this proved highly practical - sailors would come into port, enjoy some female company, and then come straight here to confess their sins. The church (back then, it was a Catholic place of worship) smartened up and began allowing sailors to obtain forgiveness in advance... for a price. But then came the Reformation, and that was the end of that practice |
 |
| Amy, unaware that there was a small admission price to get in, waltzed right by the line at the entrance as I blithely followed. Oops... Anyway, the interior is so bare because it was vandalized during the religious wars in the 16th century - Protestants gutted the interior of this (then Catholic) church |
 |
| Here's a spooky fact - the floor is made entirely out of gravestones marking 2,500 graves for 10,000 Amsterdam citizens, who were buried here until 1865 |
 |
| The church's big, famous 17th-century organ |
 |
| Looking towards the Basilica of St. Nicholas |
 |
| More about the tilted houses: apparently all the old houses along the canals are built on pinewood poles driven about 50 feet through the muddy marshland. If the water level ever drops, the poles became exposed to the air and rot. These five houses are particularly crooked and are called the Dancing Queens |
One more thing, though. I thought Amsterdam's greatest architectural highlight wasn't the giant Royal Palace or one of the city's several churches or the grand Rijksmuseum. I thought it was the multitude of beautiful, skinny, crooked, gabled canal houses. I collected a number of my favorite photos of these little wonders, with the last shot, of course, being from the Red Light District. Here are the photos, without my usual commentary. Enjoy the mini photo series to finish off this post!
