We had somehow evaded the weather all day, but it finally caught up to us as we were sitting in a canal-side bar somewhere in Jordaan, listening to old records after a day of exploring, each our pint of Amstel on the table. The first flash of lightning made the entire sky light up, and it only got worse from there.
Despite the blitzes and thunder the rain was holding out, only a light drizzle in the air. We walked back towards the red light district (cheap hotels come at a price), the lightning increasing in intensity every minute of the way, deciding as we got closer to look for a place to have our last beer for the evening.
Being indecisive, we walked up one side of the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal and down the other. This was when when the wind got furious. The rain started pouring down, people seeking shelter under any roof they could find. Everywhere, doors were being moored to the walls, any loose signs standing outside taken in. The wind felt like it was trying to tear us off the ground - but we didn’t realise just how strong it really was until it took hold of one of the many scooters parked along the waters edge and toppled it right into the middle of the canal.
The storm that evening was a striking difference to the town that had greeted us that morning - calm and serene, if a little crowded. We’d arrived early in the morning, a couple of hours before we could check in to our hotel and get rid of our unpractically-large-for-Amsterdams-narrow-streets backpacks, and were looking for ways to pass the time. Not wanting to walk too far with all the extra weight, we settled down at a café for lunch and some much needed coffee. Right outside the café were the docks from which many of the canal tours were based, so seeing as we had an hour and a little to go until check in after we finished our food, we decided to go ahead.
Amsterdam Centraal railway station seen from the canal.
There were two kinds of boat, yellow and blue. We’d originally wanted to go on the blue, it left a little sooner and cost a little less, but a horde of loud school children deterred us from our original plan, and we headed for the yellow boat leaving the dock five minutes later.
It was the best choice we could have possibly made. We were only six passengers on the boat, all English speakers. It only took a couple of minutes on the water for our captain, a tall man who’d joked he looked nothing like a captain, but we’d have to take his word that he was, to announce that instead of having us listen to the generic audio tour he’d give us his own tour of the city. You’d be hard pressed to have a more delightful tour of anything.
Our captain, probably talking about the housing boat market.
The captain started our tour by informing us, sternly, that we would be stuck with him for the next hour, and seeing as he was still hungover from yesterday he would probably crash the boat into at least one bridge. If we crashed, he said, we would all be dead. He kept us on the line long enough that we all exchanged slightly worried glances, “he’s kidding, right?”, before bursting out laughing and teasing us we’d believed him. A bit of a gamble, but his deadpan humour had the entire group laughing when he finally let us of the hook.
As the tour went on he told us about the canal housing market (much more expensive than I could have ever imagined); how air bnb is a great way to make money in Amsterdam - and even fund your houseboat dream (makes sense); why the city is so strangely built (it started out with only two streets and a port, and everything else just got added on bit by bit with no coherent building plan); how they clean the canals (they flush them with lake water); how when they built the Victoria hotel one land owner had held out on selling so long - in hopes of raising his property value - that the hotel was simply built around his house, and so much more. My favourite fact of the day was learning the reason that the topmost window of almost all buildings, no matter size or the social status of it’s builder, being approximately the same size, around 1 by 1 meter; so that coffins could be more easily taken out of the houses if someone died on the top floor.
An hour later, the tour wrapped up, we were back on the docks and it was time to check into our hotel. The hotel, Hotel Torenzicht, was nothing much, but it had been cheap. It consisted of three floors of rooms with exceptionally squeaky floorboards above a dive bar on the first floor. Looks can be deceiving, however, and when the night finally drew to a close and we stumbled back into our hotel drenched in rain and disheveled by the wind, we realised this was exactly what we had been looking for the entire time; somewhere calm and cozy, close to home, where the beers were cheap and we could stay and talk all night.
Granted, we only stayed up til two. We had an early morning train to catch to Brussels - which I’ll tell you about next time.
If you have any feedback, please leave me a comment! I’d love some constructive criticism.