Colorado 2012

Colorado 2012
Purgatory

Monday 19 August 2013

Amsterdam

From Kolping we left Denmark, and headed back into Germany. We arrived in Hamburg around lunchtime. It was nice to spend the day wandering through Hamburg, It’s easy to tell it is a wealthy city, and we felt a little out of place. It was similar to Milan, except that it was much prettier, there were small canals, a big lake and a town square with beautiful old buildings.
The next morning we drove down to Amsterdam. We found a caravan park outside of the city and decided we would camp for a few nights.
From the camp site, it was a short walk to the small ferry port, where every 10 minutes a ferry came to take us over the river to the center of Amsterdam. The ferry was great, it was free and frequent, plus it only took 3-4 minutes to cross.
When we first arrived on the other side we were amazed.
The whole city is set amongst canals, and bikes way out number cars. There are bikes locked to anything they can fix them too and bike lanes or paths on every road. It’s awesome.
On our first afternoon we wandered along a few streets and eventually decided to hire bikes. By the time we found a place and organized our bikes, we decided to jump back on the ferry and head back to camp.
The bikes were fantastic, they were single speed ‘Dutch Bikes’ with back pedal brakes and with no hills at all they were all we needed. Plus the bikes we got were bright green.

After a sleep in, we made our way into the city, and it was definitely handy having the bikes. We cruised around easily although the main city.
The place is gorgeous, with huge trees along the canals, pretty bridges and incredible crooked houses lining the streets. The houses really are almost comical, it’s hard to find two straight buildings in a row anywhere. They all have dark paint and bright white window sills, it’s really cool. 

We spent a few hours just riding around, most of the things we really wanted to see were packed, so we decided to leave them for the next day. It was just as fun and interesting cruising along the canals taking it all in.
And there is quite a lot to take in.
There are all kinds of strange and different people, most of them hanging around out the front of ‘Coffee shops’. But even the stores are interesting to look at, although when we stumbled upon the Red Light District, we were amazed as the mannequins were alive and lacking many clothes.. 












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