We took a boat tour of the canals this afternoon. The scenery was beautiful, but—perhaps due to the multilingual nature of tourism in Amsterdam—the guided part of the tour came in the form of an audioguide in the language of your choice.
The format was a dialogue between a husband and wife who have been living in Amsterdam for sixty years. They narrate the passing sites and reminisce about their lives together (“Do you remember our wedding photos on the Magere Bridge, Nell?” “I do, Steve. It was so windy that day.” “Yes, Nell. It was so windy your wedding veil blew right into the canal.” “Oh, Steve, don’t remind me.”)
There were technical difficulties getting the tour to play, so we only caught the first few vignettes and the last few. I’m not sure which was the greater blessing—when the audioguide worked, or when it didn’t.
Here’s a row of canal houses. Many of them date to the 1600s, when spice trade with the Dutch East Indies, via the VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) enriched many merchants. The cargo hooks on the top were to haul warehouse materials from the ground floor up to the safety of the attic when the city flooded.
Below is is a street near the New Kirk. Dad happened to be in the way.
This is a striped building that currently serves as a shopping center. I don’t know what its original function was. I will have to find out. There a number of such striped buildings in Amsterdam.
And finally, we have the oldest building in Amsterdam—the black-painted wood house in the middle here. There are very few wooden houses left in Amsterdam after a series of medieval fires. This one dates from the 1470s. It belonged to a commune of women who were the secular equivalent of nuns, living in relative poverty and devoting their lives to good works. The order died out in the 1970s, but the houses around this courtyard are still used as women-only subsidized housing. I wonder if they would take a starving American artist…
