Yesterday, at around eight in the morning, we landed at Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport. After catching an Uber to our hotel and sleeping for several hours, we set off on foot to explore the city.
Disoriented and with no real destination in mind, we ventured towards the city center, walking along the canal through the Museumkwartier. This neighborhood, named for the towering Rijksmuseum that towers over it, is sleepy in the morning but becomes lively in the evenings. Here, bicycles, cars, and trams form an uneasy truce as they roll along the old cobblestone streets, while boats float peacefully by in the canal below.
We then crossed the Museumplein, a large complex of green spaces and formal gardens on which many of Amsterdam’s key art museums are located.
After crossing another bridge, we entered Centraal, the historic urban core of the city. Most of the buildings in this district date to the seventeenth century.
After briefly exploring Centraal, we started walking back to our hotel, this time passing through the De Pijp neighborhood, a well-known hipster hangout. In this bohemian borough, centuries-old storefronts are occupied by vintage clothing shops, record stores, and restaurants offering cuisine from all over the globe. We stopped at a pasta restaurant for dinner, and then returned to our hotel for the night.
Today, we returned to the Museumplein to visit the Van Gogh Museum, which exhibits the work of the most famous Dutch artist, Vincent Van Gogh.
Unfortunately, tickets to the museum were completely sold out, and as such, the museum was extremely crowded, which made it difficult to fully take in all of the artwork. We walked through the museum’s five floors of galleries before walking to the Jordaan neighborhood, where we would embark on a boat tour of the old city.
Above, the river Amstel— the only of Amsterdam’s many bodies of water that was not man-made. The city of Amsterdam as it stands today was almost entirely constructed by the Dutch East India Company, history’s largest and most powerful corporation, which effectively controlled the territory of modern-day Indonesia and dominated ocean shipping between Europe and Asia.
The city’s canals were dug out by hand, mostly in the seventeenth century, to allow cargo to be transported around the city via barge. The iconic Dutch canal houses of old Amsterdam were built as warehouses for spices and other goods imported by the East India Company, with most retaining hooks and winches on their façades which were once used to hoist shipments up to their upper floors.
After our boat tour, we stopped at a small cafè near the Royal Palace for lunch, and then took one of Amsterdam’s iconic trams back to our neighborhood. Tomorrow, we plan to visit the Vondelpark and the Rijksmuseum and further explore this beautiful city.
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