Amsterdam - A journey I will remember for long

The city of Amsterdam was founded as a fishing village around the thirteenth century. Amsterdam developed round a dam in the Amstel river at the end of the 12th century. The name Amstelledamme occurs for the first time in the toll concession of Floris V, Count of Holland, dated October 27, 1275. We all know that a big part of whole of The Netherlands is below sea level and Amsterdam is no different. Even the Schipol airport at Amsterdam is inside a lake and even today also there are a few steam engines that keep on pumping rain water from the lake to keep the area dry. It is amazing...isn't it?

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Also known as Venice of north, the city of Amsterdam has a web of canals that are spread into each nook and corner of the city and enhances the beauty of the city multi fold. The excellently designed canal system also helps in improving local transportation. Another mode of local transportation that is very popular here is the bike or the bicycle. It is really amazing to know that a city of 7 lakh population has 6 lakh+ bicycles and is most popular form of local transportation. This not only keeps the people fit but also relieves the city roads of heavy traffic and pollution.

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I recently got another opportunity to visit the city and I made sure to make most of it this time. Not only I could roam around the city but also made a point to visit the beautiful countryside. Surfing beautiful countryside cities like Edam, Marken and Volendam and going around the wind mills was a great experience. The picture you can see here is of a countryside old style windmill house that is fast going the extinction way these days making way for the new and more efficient windmills. The new windmills are so large in numbers now that you can see them all over the Holland. The picture taken from the aeroplane, shown below will give us a glimpse of the sheer number of windmills in this beautiful country. Please note that all white spots are those monster windmills. These windmills are not the only beauty spots of Amsterdam though. The city is home to some exquisite buildings of modern as well as the not so modern era. The architecture of these buildings is unique be it a church or an airport or a business centre.

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To top it all, this European city, unlike others have much more to offer to an Indian Vegetarian as it has 50+ Indian restaurants where the traditional vegetables covers a good area on the menu card. And this is in addition of the delicious non vegetarian dishes that you can find all over the city. The journey to this city this time was really nice and there is still a lot in me to write about this and will surely let all know in future posts.