Keukenhof Gardens and Day One Amsterdam

So as we were thinking about trips we wanted to take earlier in the year Kayla said that she wanted to go to Amsterdam in the spring to see the tulips.  I was unsure of this idea because in my head she wanted to go to Amsterdam and spend several days looking at flowers.  As many of you know I think flowers are pretty but am not the biggest flower enthusiast, so I was a bit hesitant about it.  Later I found out we would just spend some time with the flowers as well as time in the city.  Well now that we are back in Poland and I reflect on our trip I have to admit that the Keuenhof Garden was probably my favorite thing in Holland. 

On our first day in Amsterdam we got off the bus at 6:30 in the morning.  Well we almost didn’t get off, because we didn’t realize it was the Amsterdam City Center and the bus arrived early.  I went up to ask the lady when we would be there and she said, “We are here, but we are leaving now so hurry and get off the bus!”  So there we were at 6:30 in the morning in the middle of Amsterdam and it was empty.  I think we saw 3 or 4 other people milling around in the whole city center. 

We walked around a bit because the trams were not yet running.  Then went to our hostel.  When we had dropped off our bags and asked the receptionist several questions we were on our way to another Sandmans Free Walking Tour!  It was again a good tour where we learned much about the city and history.  We learned that houses are so tall and skinny because there is a frontage tax in Amsterdam.  We learned that because of this the stairs in the houses are more like ladders than stairs so moving things in and out it impossible.  Therefore all of the houses have hooks coming out of the roof and people use a pulley system to move large items in and out of the windows.  Because of the swaying of large objects and they are lifted into a house windows are easily broken so people started building their houses leaning forward to help eliminate this problem. 

See the hooks?

The red house it the narrowest house in Amsterdam.  It is less then 2 meters wide!

Since it was a nice day we decided to also to go to the Keukenhof Gardens.  It was amazing; I had so much fun taking TONS of pictures.  Then we were pretty beat so we went back to Amsterdam walked a bit more and then headed to bed for a good night sleep!