Amsterdam is an "interesting" and VERY nautical town! :-)

Amsterdam is an amazing nautical city!

While we haven't seen Venice (yet,) we HAVE finally seen Amsterdam. This city is basically a nautical port city, hiding behind a barrier of protective man-made levies. Ships transition from the city to the sea via some of the largest locks in the world.

Behind these locks, the water level is maintained – there are no high nor low tides in their canals -- the water levels remain constant.

And, with so many old houseboats and such lining the canals, I'm assuming that they are actually freshwater canals (and the locks/dams actually maintain a bit of separation between freshwater estuaries, and the saltwater sea.)

The city is extremely difficult to navigate by car. We were successful in our efforts, but I attribute it more to luck than skill. My lil' ol' GPS doesn't seem to have the ability to lock-on to any satellites here. So, I have resorted to the assistance of a dime store compass (which periodically “sticks” and needs a few taps to bring it back to life.)

But, with our rude compass, and a even more rude map (from a travel book that we bought at the last minute,) we found our way through the city to our destinations.

Our first goal was a canal tour via a tour boat. (If you have been following this blog, you know that we have water/boating on the brain...) The canal tour boat was well-heated, and took us on a one-hour waterborne tour of the city. The audio track system was tri-lingual (Dutch, English, and German) – but, was poorly structured and contained minimal content. We prefer the LIVE tours offered on the double-decker buses in London. If not a live tour, then we would prefer a headphone-based specific language system. (e.g. Where you put on your headphones, and then select the “channel” that contains the tour in your native language.)

After our canal tour, we walked the streets and shops for awhile (as long as we could hold out against the cold.) We finally found a nice place for dinner (and to take shelter from the cold.) It was the first restaurant that we have eaten at that had FREE wireless Internet service! Throughout this trip, I have had to pilfer WiFi connections from a neighboring property/hotel, or PAY FOR IT! (I hate paying for WiFi these days.) It was so nice to have FREE Internet. We placed calls to a few family and friends.

The locals here in Amsterdam keep laughing at us and giving us funny looks. The are riding around on their bikes and mopeds WITHOUT even wearing hats or ear protection! Heck, I saw one gal riding side-saddle on the back of a bike in a skirt with high heals – and only a light sweater!!! (It's something like 19 degrees Fahrenheit here (during the WARMEST part of the day!) Our Florida blood is now too thin for this kinda cold! Brrrrrrr.

Oh, bikes... This city is nothing but bikes!!! This city has MILLIONS of bikes. I'm talking MILLIONS PER BLOCK!!!! Bikes, bikes, bikes. I can't even begin to explain how many bikes this city has. We (as Americans) can't even fathom this quantity of bikes. But, I'll attempt to illustrate it in words:

Imagine a double-decker bike rack, that ran along EVERY SINGLE street of your downtown home town – with EVERY SINGLE slot within that rack populated with a bicycle. Block-to-block, street after street bikes racks and bikes! Bikes and MORE bikes! Seriously folks, there must be about 30 bikes per every linear yard of paved street in Amsterdam. The streets have more bikes than usual – but the parked bikes are simply outrageous. I even saw a three-story parking garage (like we would see at a mega mall in the States – FILLED with nothing but handlebar-to-handlebar bikes!!!

After dinner, we drove around a bit, saw the red light district, etc. But, it was just too darned cold to venture away from the heated comfort of our little Citroen Pepe'. We had originally planned to spend the night in downtown Amsterdam. But, the cost of parking Pepe' was too prohibitive, so we went ahead and boogied on down the road towards our daughter near Düsseldorf, Germany.

Enroute, we found an odd little motel on the Netherlands/German border. It's kinda like a cross between a Motel 6, a Best Western, an ATM machine, and a self-service gas station. It has an automated check-in machine (no front desk.) You simply select the accommodations that you want, then insert your credit card – and then down drops your room key. (I'm assuming we will be seeing a LOT more of these in the States, soon.) Fortunately, the room was VERY clean, modern and comfortable.

Oh, during our trip in-bound to Amsterdam, we saw three windmills. The fog and snow severely limited our visibility, so we could only see the ones that were right next to the highway. I assume that when it's sunny and clear, the place is littered with them. I have seen a couple of postcards of the tulip fields, and they appear to be quite dramatic. I'm sure it would be a site to behold in the Spring time.

Our early departure from Amsterdam means that we will catch-up with Amanda a few hours earlier than planned. :-) (See ya' soon kid!)

P.S. I have added a few pictures to the earlier posts. (I sometimes have difficulty getting the pictures to upload properly, so there may be a day or so lag until all of them appear.) Sorry...