Page 16 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2016 - Amsterdam

14 ❯❯ Top 10 Amsterdam Highlights

Unexpected Sights on a Canal Tour

The Dutch National Bank
The Safest Vaults
Blue Angel
1 6
Cast your eye upwards to the
The vaults of the Dutch
National Bank are sunk some 15 m beautiful Blue Angel statue perched
(48 ft) below ground level. In the on the former Levens verzekering
event of an alarm, they have been Maatschappij - Noord-Braband
designed to allow the waters of the building, at the corner of Singel and
Singelgracht to flood into them. Haarlemmerstraat.
The Most Crooked Café
The Prison Bridge
2 7
The Torensluis – the widest
Teetering Café de Sluyswacht,
bridge in Amsterdam – spans the built in 1695, makes an alarming
Singel on the site of a 17th-century sight as you glide by along the
tower. A lock-up jail, open to the Oudeschans (see p84).
public, was built into its foundations. The Wrapped-up House
The Cat Boat
3 8
Look carefully at Victoria
Hotel, near the station, and you will
Hundreds of feline waifs and
strays are given refuge in De see two tiny 17th-century houses in
Poezenboot (The Cat Boat), moored the monumental 19th-century
on the Singel. façade. A little old lady, so the story
goes, refused to sell up, so the hotel
The Drunken Tsar
4 had to wrap itself around them.
In 1716, Peter the Great got
Museumhaven,
drunk at his friend Christoffel 9
Brants’ house at Keizersgracht Oosterdok
317, and kept the mayor waiting at The long jetty leading up to the
a civic reception. That night, he elevated hood above the River IJ is
stayed at the house of the Russian lined with vintage boats and barges
ambassador, Herengracht 527, dating from the 19th century.
where Napoleon stayed in 1811. The Tower of Tears
The Narrowest House
5 0
Originally part of the medieval
Singel 7: the smallest house
city wall, this 15th-century tower has
in Amsterdam? No, it’s the back the saddest of names: Schreierstoren,
door of a wedge- shaped house, from where weeping women waved
whatever your tour guide tells you. farewell to their seafaring men.
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