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Lise and I got up early to return our luggage to the car (which if you remember was on the outskirts of Amsterdam). We took a little more time than I expected and we barely made it on time to the meeting point for the "Free tour" of Amsterdam.
The "free tours" hosted by Sandeman's are one of our favorite things to do when we travel to different cities in europe. They are guided by freelance tour guides who, instead of assigning a fixed cost to the tour, allow you to experience the tour and let you decide what it was worth based on your own budget and the quality of the tour. We have done tours in London, Paris, Madrid, and now Amsterdam and almost all of them have been fantastic. Amsterdam was no exception. Some cool things we learned:
- Amsterdam hasn't actually legalized marijuana. They have just depenalized it. You can have up to 5 grams on you at any time.
- The people of Amsterdam actually use less marijuana per capita than most other countries. Depenalizing it has made it boring for them i guess. That being said, a lot of tourists still come to Amsterdam
The Dutch East India Company
This was the first place where holding stocks in a company started. The guide called it the birthplace of modern capitalism.specifically for the legal marijuana.
- Amsterdam was built on a swamp, which is not the best foundation for its buildings. Therefore, a lot of the buildings are slightly tilted. Many of the buildings have 15 to 20 meter wooden poles dug into the ground to help support them.
- The houses are very narrow because they used to be taxed based on the width of the front of the house.
- Due to Amsterdam's extensive experience in fighting sinking buildings, they have been called in to help other sinking cities like Bangkok and New Orleans.
- Prostitution is actually legal. They are considered "freelancers" much like the tour guide that we had. Costs run roughly 50 euros for 15 minutes.
- Pepper was expensive back when the Dutch East India Company existed and sold spices. Amsterdamers still use the phrase "pepper expensive" to describe things that are not cheap.
- Dutch people are the tallest, on average, of people in any country.
- Most people get around by bike. There are more bikes than people. Parking is very expensive and hard to find sometimes. From city center you can get to pretty much anywhere in the city in 20
The smallest house in Amsterdam
The red building in the middle. It is 1.6 meters wide. minutes or less.
- Throwing bikes in the canals is a drinking game, so make sure you lock up your bike. It is actually someone's job to extract bicycles out of the 160+ canals in Amsterdam.
- The national languages are Dutch and English.
After the tour we stopped a cafe overlooking a canal for lunch. Note: Europeans do not have the same sense of urgency for eating, serving, or collecting a check as Americans do. Don't expect to be in and out of lunch in an hour. After lunch we shopped at a cheese store that was one of the stops on the tour and bought some unique dutch cheeses (ginger cheese and rosemary goat cheese) for Lise's parents. We then headed back to the car to continue our adventure in Cologne.
In hindsight, I would have liked to spend at least one extra day in Amsterdam. There is so much history and culture in the city that it felt like an injustice to only stay one night. However, it is an expensive place to stay and would have been a very expensive decision to spend another day here on this particular trip. We have put it
Tilted house
At the end on the right on our list as a place to visit again in the future.
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