Tourism of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the capital of Holland. Amsterdam is about 720 years old. In 1275 Floris the 5th called the city Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a very touristic city. The best way to go trough Amsterdam is by a bicycle or tram, because there is much traffic and not much parking zones and the parking zones are very expensive.
Amsterdam is divided in 15 parts called: Slotervaart, Zuidoost, Westerpark, Oudwest, Centrum, Oudzuid, Westpoort, Geuzenveld, De Baarsjes, Watergraafsmeer, Bos en Lommer, Osdorp, Zeeburg, ZuiderAmstel. Amsterdam has a area of 22.000 hectares. There are about 735.328 people are living in Amsterdam.

A place where a lot of tourists come is the Dam. There are beautiful buildings, and also a palace on the dam. There is also a statue in the middle on the Dam. The tourists like to see the funny street artists and feeding the pigeons on the Dam.








A picture of me on the Dam feeding the pigeons






The statue on the Dam remembers the victims of the WO2. Once a year on the 4th of May, a lot of people in Amsterdam come together on the Dam and put flowers by the statue in memory of the victims. And on 5 May we are celebraiting our freedom after the WO2( it is also my birthday)

Amsterdam has also a zoo called Artis, it was the first zoo in Holland. It was made in 1838.
It lies in the middle in Amsterdam and has a lot of animals. In the beginning they only had a few monky`s, deers and parrots. Now they have all kinds of animals. On the 2th of December in 1882 the aquarium was opened in Artis. The water for aquarium was brought by big steamships. Artis has for about 500 diffrent species of fish. In Artis you also can learn things about planets and stars in the planetarium. They have a area of African animals and a area with animals of europe. The other things that there are: Childrens farm, The gibbon island, The small mammal house, Elephants, Wolf wood, Penguin rock, Californian sea lions, Polar bears, Insects house, Gorillas, European bison and a Savanne.

Amsterdam has a nice shopping centre with much shops and outdoor cafe`s. In the city you also can find markets with new and secondhand goods.
We also have a street called the P.C. Hoofdstraat and the shops there are very chique and expensive , so you will see a lot of rich and famous people there.

Amsterdam has also many small canals that flow trough the city, together they have a lengt of 10 km. There are 240 bridges over all the canals so almost every time you see water you will probably see a few bridges. In the small canals there are also people living in houseboats. In Amsterdam you can make a little cruise by boat trough the canals. You can also rent waterbikes to go waterbiking through the canals.




A small canal in Amsterdam






You can visit nice museums in Amsterdam.
A famous museum is the van Gogh museum( a famous painter). In that museum you can see a lot of his artwork. Another famous museum in Amsterdam is Madame Tussauds, on the dam. In that museum there are many statues made of wax of famous people and they look very real.

The soccer stadion of Amsterdam is called: The Arena. The soccer club of Amsterdam is called Ajax. The Arena is not only used for soccer but also for american football ( Amsterdam Admirals) and music concerts. It has a roof that can be opened and closed depending on the weather.






A picture of the Arena







In Holland it`s aloud to smoke marihuana therefore you can see many coffeeshops in Amsterdam, where you can buy and smoke marihuana. In a small part of Amsterdam there is prostitution and that`s also legal in Holland.

I like Amsterdam because it is a beautiful and busy city.

Thom van Seijen