Amsterdam

So given the limits of what I felt was safe for others we largely limited ourselves to walking around outside in Amsterdam. 

This is the street our Air bnb is on. We are quite centrally located in the heart of Amsterdam. (About 1/2 mile to the train station) The area was obviously never bombed or minimally during World War 2. In the core area of downtown 85% of the Buildings are part of a Unesco World Heritage site. This means that the buildings exterior must stay the same and unchanged. So for example some house were painted black during the time of the plague and have largely stayed that way. The owner cannot decide to paint it blue or red just because… it has to stay black. The 15% of the buildings not covered are the result of being torn down prior to the designation or fire damage. Even larger hotels have to stay in the limit so if a new luxury hotel chain wants to come in they would have to buy several houses in a row and gut the insides but leave all of the outsides unchanged.

We were told that the houses here have the shape and structure because of the tax system in place during the growth phase of Amsterdam. Property tax was set by the street frontage, number of windows, and number of stairs ways in the house. (Also there was a quirky rule if the windows had shutters they could be counted as a door.) The net result is narrow street frontage (or width)and multiple stories but interestingly there would be ladders and not stairs connecting floors. The lack of stairs is why every home had a pulley built in to the top of the building to allow hoisting furniture up to the upper floors.

Our big city experience has mostly been American New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco Amsterdam is very different from them. There are some cars and trucks.. enough that you do need to watch for them but…. There are SO many bicycles….and you really have to watch for them. When we were on the boat someone told us that the order of right of way in Amsterdam is Bicycle first then Pedestrian, then car… I don’t know what the law is but that is definitely the practical case.

Walking outside during rush hour the bicycle lanes remind me of RAGBRAI with so many bicycles riding along…but in both directions. At road crossings we have gotten use to looking forward backward and side to side twice before crossing. The other thing I had heard before we left home is stay off the red pavement. Some of the designated bicycle lanes are painted red or paved with red brick. In either case you do NOT want to use it as a sidewalk. We have seen at least two bike pedestrian collisions. No major damage to either person, although the bicycle in one must have been a bit patched up because something seemed to break on his bike that should not have if it were in good shape. 

While walking out and about we have seen some dog walkers and the dogs do there thing right on the side walk. We first thought why aren’t they using the grass… oh wait there is no grass. There are trees planted along the canals but there is no grass anywhere that we have seen. 

Today is my sixth day since symptoms started. From the information we received from our Cruise line I theoretically could fly home.. not sure about the wisdom of that but if I could spend 8 hours in a tube with people we may start doing a few indoor activities today.

Ila continues healthy with no symptoms…