Doing the Tourist Bit.......

After breakfast 🍳🥐🧀 Jayne & I walked 🚶‍♂️ 🚶‍♀️towards the old town only this time via the Albert Cuyp Market, which was a first for me, having never ventured into the De Pijp area of Amsterdam. Originating in 1905 and with 260 stalls, this market is regarded as the biggest in Europe and is open 6 days a week from 09:30 through to 17:00. The market provides a real Amsterdam atmosphere and is popular with locals, students, and tourists selling fruit 🍉, veg🫑, cheese 🧀, accessories, clothes, flowers 💐 and fabrics.
Leaving the market, we headed for the oldest part of Amsterdam, which also included the famous red 🚦light district and the only remaining gate of the now disappeared wall around the old town. The Waag or weigh house in English is a 15th-century building that following the removal of the walls housed the weighing scales for the local market, Nieuwmarkt, that surrounded it. After a refreshing drink 🍺 in the sunshine once again watching the world go by we walked the few hundred yards to Dam Square, pausing on Damrak looking at the reflections from the old buildings in the canal where the canal cruising boats were moored and overlooked by the Central Railway station. Dam Square was created in the 13th century when a dam was built around the river Amstel to prevent the Zuiderzee sea from flooding the city. During the sixties, the square was renowned for its Dam Square hippies. These days, it is one of the main tourist sights where entertainment and pigeons abound. On the south side of Dam Square stands the controversially phallic National Memorial statue, built in the memory of Dutch soldiers and members of the resistance who died in World War 2. Unveiled in 1956, the monument stores soil from all of Netherlands' provinces as well as from the Dutch East Indies.Read more