Amsterdam Canal Tour
A very common touristy activity is a canal tour. Unless you want to bike a lot, this is the best way to see most of the city's highlights in about an hour. A number of companies run these tours on very low boats so they can fit under the bridges. But the top of the boats are glass so the view is not obstructed. The tours are less than 7 euros and leave every 15 minutes. If you walk out of the central station down the main street, Damrak, the boats will be on your left. The only annoying thing is that all the audio is played in 4 languages. French, English, Dutch, and German. Depending on the timing and your language, you may be hearing things too early or too late. To the left you get a nice perspective of 4 parallel bridges. To the right you see a sampling of the narrow houses along the streets in the city center. If you look closely you can see in all the houses, espe
cially the one on the right, that each floor gets progressively shorter. The windows on the top floor are much shorter than the windows on the ground floor. If you're walking along the street below and look up, you would just think that the distance and perspective makes the higher floors look shorter and shorter. Was this a way for the builder to trick the buyer? Do shorter people live on the higher floors? Another thing to note is the huge amount of window space....how else do you bring in the furniture? Not up the insanely steep stairs.Labels: amsterdam, netherlands
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