Gone Dutch...

I got back from Amsterdam yesterday.

Didn't have time to blog anything while I was there. Actually that's a lie - the one time an internet cafe was immediately apparent, it was also shut due to technical difficulties. Maybe it was waterlogged. Amsterdam is 6.7m below sea-level, so they spend most of Holland's environmental research budget on working out how not to spend their entire lives underwater. (Something which the UK will probably have to start doing after this summer.)

Anyway, here are your Top 10 Dutch Icons as seen over five days...



Bikes and Flowers...
(Millions of bikes everywhere. Where's Katie Meluiliulia when you need her to write a bloody song...)
(Not appreciably more tulips than anything else...)



Canals and Windmills...
(Some canals are crossed by these swingy-style bridges. Water doesn't go foetid or smell as clever Dutch hydrologists have worked out how to refresh it every three days...)
(Windmills are just tourist attractions nowadays. These three have been moved on the back of lorries from various parts of Holland to a kind of Home for Retired Windmills ...)



Heineken and Clogs...
(They don't brew it in Amsterdam any more, they just charge you €12 to go in and look at some old adverts sitting in a Star Trek chair...)
(Man does not spend days hand crafting clogs now, he just puts a big block of wood into big version of machine that copies keys and that makes them for him...)



Red Light District and Narrow Canalside Houses...
(Admittedly a very general, daytime shot of the Red Light District. If you try to take anything more specific or at night time, you might get killed...)
(On bus tour, canal barge tour and cycle tour, three different guides pointed to three different houses and said they were the narrowest in Amsterdam...)



Anne Frank's House and Cheese...
(Never having read her diary, and been berated for not having done, I thought she hid on her own in a tiny attic room. Turns out she hid with quite a large number of family and friends in quite a sizeable granny-annex. I'm not saying that made being Jewish during the occupation any easier, or made her story any less tragic, just exposing my ignorance...)
(Two for the price of one here - the cheesemaker is wearing clogs...)

(I suppose Van Gogh should be in the Top 10 as well. And Rembrandt. But Van Gogh was a miserable bugger by all accounts and Rembrandt was a bankrupt, so they can be 11 and 12 and not worthy of further comment.)