Weekend in Amsterdam

We spent last weekend in Amsterdam. It's a great city and quite different to others we've visited. The canals, canal houses, houseboats, bicycles, coffeeshops and red light district, all make for a unique and interesting place!

The weather on Saturday was a bit cold and rainy, good for museum visiting. We saw paintings by the Dutch Masters at the beautiful Rijksmuseum and had an emotional visit to the Anne Frank house.

We also did a hour long cruise of the canals and visited the Houseboat museum. There are about 2,500 houseboats in Amsterdam and they sell from about €200,000, with annual mooring fees of €400+. Apart from the disadvantage of minimal privacy and limited space, you also have to send your houseboat to the shipping yard every 3 years for maintenance. I like that it's different.... but not the life for me.

After breakfast on Sunday, we walked around the flower market (past an Australian icecream shop?) and visited the Amsterdam Historic Museum. Here you get to learn all about how Amsterdam grew into a massive shipping port and a key player in world trade. The city is built on peat bog with wood /cement pillars driven about 40m into the ground to provide the foundation. It seems pretty stable to me, perhaps not if we'd been visiting any of the coffee shops.

The sky was almost clear, so it was time to get away from museums and do some outdoor activity. We hired a canal bike (pedal boat) and cruised around the canals for an hour. It was quite difficult to steer, so we had some challenging moments, especially when I took hold of the wheel (well....it looked easy!)!

I'd been told the Red Light District is something to be seen, but without a guidebook, I didn't think we'd ever find it (the tourist office doesn't exactly advertise it!). Leaving the city to go back to our hotel on Sunday night, we followed a group of tourists and stumbled upon the famous area. It certainly was a sight to see!

On Monday morning it was back to Geneva and back to work. We woke up at 6am in Amsterdam and thanks to EasyJet being on time, I was back at my desk in Geneva by 10.30am - amazing!

Click here for all the photos our our visit to Amsterdam.