Destination: Amsterdam
What To See Amsterdam Amsterdam   + The City of Amsterdam Excursions   + Excursions Walk/Drive Food&Drink In The Know Did You Know?	DID YOU KNOW? In 1555 the Habsburg Emperor Charles V turned over the Low Countries to his son, the future King Philip II of Spain. Philip, an ardent Catholic, set about oppressing Protestantism. Amsterdam remained neutral in the struggle that broke out until 1578, when its Calvinist merchants overthrew the city's Catholic council in an event remembered as the Alteratie (Alteration) and threw in their lot with the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish led by William of Orange. A shaggy dog story competes with the historical record of Amsterdam's foundation. Two fishermen and a dog, their boat caught in a Zuiderzee storm, made landfall at what is now the Dam. The dog jumped on to dry land and promptly threw up, thereby marking the spot. An image of two men and a seasick dog in a boat appears on the city's old coat of arms, which you can see at various places around town. Contrary to popular opinion, drugs are not legal in Holland. Penalties for possessing and selling heroin, cocaine and other `hard' drugs can be heavy. `Soft' drugs, such as hashish and marijuana, are also illegal, but Amsterdam's authorities tolerate their sale in small quantities in licensed `smoking coffee shops'. You are allowed to possess up to 30g of these substances for personal use, though coffee shops can sell you only 5g at a time. In what must have been music to Jewish ears, the great Dutch jurist and humanist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), in his Remonstratie (1614), welcomed Jewish refugees who had fled to Holland to escape persecution: `Plainly God desires them to live somewhere. Why not here rather than elsewhere? The scholars among them may even be of service to us by teaching us the Hebrew language.' No other city in the world has as many bridges as Amsterdam, which has 1,281. You can see 15 from the bridge over Herengracht at Thorbeckeplein. Torensluis (1684), on Singel at Oude Leliestraat, is the oldest. The cast-iron Blauwbrug (Blue Bridge) over the Amstel, built in 1884 and inspired by Paris's Pont Alexandre III, retains the nickname of a 16th-century wooden bridge painted `Nassau Blue' after the 1578 religious Alteratie; having lost its blue paint in 1969, the Blauwbrug got it back in a renovation due to be completed in 1999. When the Amsterdam lost its rudder on a voyage to the East Indies, Captain Willem Klump beached his three-masted ship off Hastings in England. He saved his passengers and crew and recovered 28 chests of silver. Much of the cargo remains onboard: medicines, foodstuffs, wine, muskets, cannon and munitions. With its upper decks washed away and its hull visible at very low tide, the Amsterdam lies embedded in sand. The Klein Trippenhuis at Kloveniersburgwal 26, which has a façade 2.44m wide, was built in 1696 for the coachman of the merchant Trip brothers, whose own house, at Kloveniersburgwal 29, is 22m wide. One of the brothers apparently overheard the coachman saying how he wished he had a house as wide as his masters' door, and the lucky servant had his wish fulfilled. Nowadays it's a trendy fashion boutique. German singer-songwriter Klaus-Günter Neumann wrote that quintessentially `Dutch' song Tulips from Amsterdam in 1956. Postcards now take the cliché a step further, by showing a pair of sticky red lips and the slogan `Two Lips From Amsterdam'. In 1616, Willem Schouten was the first seaman to sail round the southern tip of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, and into the Pacific. He named the rocky, storm-swept point of Tierra del Fuego island Kap Hoorn (Cape Horn) after his home town.	COUNTRY Netherlands REGION CITIES Amsterdam   Viewing   Top Ten   What To See   Where To ...   Practical Matters The Hague MAPS World Europe TRAVEL BOOK