Very smooth sail last night through North Sea. Long sail up the harbour to port in Amsterdam after we negotiated the lock at 5am. Amsterdam known as the liberal city as you may well have heard from stories of red light district and marijuana use. Cookie does not mean cookie as you know it and while there are rules about traffic and like, no-one obeys them. Still everything moves along nicely with the bikes usually winning out over the cars. Cyclists everywhere of course and they expect you to get out of the way. Massive bike parks including tiered systems and double ups. Theft is rampant we are told and we could see huge chains and padlocks in place unlike Copenhagen where bikes just seemed to be mostly left free. Apparently theft is why helmets are few and far between – no point as nowhere to store. Our guide thought traffic was bad but pretty light I thought compared to Auckland and she has obviously never been in a Moscow traffic jam.
Nice to be back again to see more of the city. Great canal cruise this morning – love looking at the architecture and hearing the history. Amsterdam is built on wooden piles sunk down at 15 and 20 feet into clay. Interesting to see some of the movement in buildings – if it looks crooked in the pictures it probably is (not the photographer!). Construction works in the city like new metro are not helping and citizens were not happy with public viewings of soccer world cup and cheering as the walls shook and pictures fell. Glad we didn’t choose to go to the Anne Frank house – long queues seen as we sailed past and facade all covered up for renovation. The canals are pretty clean as water can be replaced via locks and drainage systems. Lots of renovation on the old buildings, some 900 under preservation orders – tricky work at best of times and more so when everything has to be lifted up by the hoist hooks at the top of each building. Most of the buildings are narrow and three or four stories high because of lack of space and weight restrictions. There are a few family homes with parking and gardens right in city costing in the vicinity of 2 million euros we’re told. They did look nice. Saw a couple of beautiful old thatched windmills – only 950 remain, some in private ownership and also protected. Apparently very few families have skills to do thatching these days so also very expensive to maintain these icons.
