On my second day in Amsterdam, I started out with a tour of the city through the canals on a boat. It's the best way to get an overview of the city, and lets you see things you just wouldn't see if you were on foot. There are lots of houseboats in the canals there. Some of them look like regular boats, but they are actually homes, like this one. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and look at the cute little floating patio in front, complete with chairs and potted plants.


Others hardly look like boats, but they are floating, so they're houseboats, I guess.


This picture looks better enlarged, as well. If you enlarge it, you can see a long row of other bridges in the background. So idyllic, in the middle of this bustling city!

This is an old canal mansion which is now used as a public building of some sort, I think. Impressive, isn't it?

This is a nice shot of the harbour, with the cityscape in the background.

Here are some more modern canalfront townhomes. I think I took this picture in the Jordaan district, where I was staying.

This guy was playing an instrument called a "hang" (pronounced "hong" with the "ng" sound being swallowed, sort of.) It had a wonderful, mystical tone to it. I loved the sound so much that I bought one of his cd's. I like listening to it when I'm winding down at the end of a day.

I took this picture from the round window on the top floor of Madame Tussaud's, looking out over Dam Square. It was late in the day and the square was almost deserted. The old Royal Palace is on the far left, with scaffolding in front, and you can see Nieuwe Kerk at the far end of the square. I'll blog about Nieuwe Kerk tomorrow.

Here is a close-up of some of the decorative aspects of the architecture. Notice at the top of each row of windows there is something sticking out from the building. There is a story to those things: This is a canal home. Property taxes are levied on canal homes according to the water frontage, so people built very narrow homes that were very deep and tall, to get as much living space as possible into a narrow lot. This necessitated installing very, VERY narrow and often quite steep staircases, definitely too narrow and steep to move furniture up and down them. So, those appendages you see jutting out are sturdy beams with heavy-duty winches attached, for bringing large items up the side of the house to be hauled in through the windows.

To wrap up today's "travelblog," here are three more pictures showing two street scenes, and some more lovely architecture.

Notice the triple XXX on the crest on this tower's facade. That is Amsterdam's city crest.

(Now you know where the term "XXX," meaning highly censored, came from!)