Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Go to sleep,” my mom kept saying. Why? We were on a plane to Frankfurt and I was watching the movie hidden figures on the plane. By the way it’s an amazing movie. Anyway my mom kept asking me to go too sleep because we had to keep up with the time zone, butt how could I? Lufthansa had just updated their movie list and I just couldn’t stop watching the sci fi movies. But you must be wondering where this babbling buffoon is going to.

I was going to Amsterdam, city of windmills and tulips. After changing planes from Frankfurt we hoped onto a 1 hour plane ride to Amsterdam, which it’s shorter than Mumbai to Bangalore. At the airport we my meet up with my cousins and went to our hotel room (service apartment) which would be or home for the next four days. What was really interesting was that there were taxi’s which were Tesla’s! It was amazing! On the ride to the hotel we hired a Tesla. We learnt from the driver that the government is trying to make Netherlands efficient with renewable energy and drivers who own electric cars don’t have to pay road tax and a bunch of other taxes! Thats amazing!

After a refreshing bath we all pulled into an Uber to go to Centraal station Amsterdam. Just in front of the Central station we went for or first attraction of the holiday: a canal ride through the beautiful canals of Amsterdam.

These canals we’re made by the Dutch merchant to easily transport goods from their houses to the main harbour from which the ships would take them away to the different parts of the world.

Fully equipped with an audio guide, they canal ride was amazing. We first saw the three layer bicycle parking which it’s actually a big tourist attraction in the city. Further down we saw one of the few high rises of Amsterdam and also a tourist destination, the LOOK  OUT tower from which you can see the whole of Amsterdam. Further down the lovely canals we saw many houses on the side. We learnt that the houses are small in width but are really high like 5 floors. This it’s because the land revenue was high. Also the entire city near the canals are on wooden planks.

The houses had different types of gabels  like bell, step, square and side. The gavel was the top of the building. Also what was interesting was that there were some kind of pulley on the outside. It was to transport goods from the bottom to the top. Since the houses were small they had small stair cases. The ground floor was dedicated to a shop, the top an attic and the middle was were the family lived. To transport goods from top to bottom they used a rope and that pulley to hoist goods up, outside the house.

As the Dutch were Christians they had several churches and clock towers. On our canal ride we came across 4 clock towers and we’re lucky to hear one of them strike the hour bell.

What I found funny was that there was a man who dropped his phone into the canals  and had jumped into the canal to retrieve it,  just before our boat was reaching there. The captain warned him that if by accident he fell under the ship, the his bones would be soup. The guy still jumped in.

There was a beautiful place where seven bridges came together like on our side we could see the seven bridges cone together and see the other side of the canal. Sorry but I just can’t describe it.

Over one of the main rivers of Amsterdam, the Amstel river  is the first of its kind opening bridge. Made by the merchants of Holland for bigger boats to ride the canals and horse carts and carriages and people to walk across.

Next came the opera house which was actually not supposed to be made. When the plan was formed there were a lot of protesters who didn’t want it to be built because it didn’t look nice.

After that we saw 1 if the 48 museums of Amsterdam: the Nemo science museum. It is an interactive place for kids where can learn about science in a fun way.

And with that our 1 hour of highlights got over. We thanked the captain and made our way to the back alleys of Amsterdam Centraal to get something to eat.

Sun still out we took our first public transport of the trip: the metro back home. I was really impressed with these transports. And with that we called it a day.

Catch the full series of  Europe: The Journey on this blog page.