one boat

Oops, don't see this very often in a canal. Sunk outboard. Maybe somebody out on the Tennessee River in Alabama got a little off course when heading home.

 

crookedy

Amsterdam is the home of crooked buildings of all shapes and sizes. There is a fine line here.....the buildings are either quaint or terrifying, depending on the level of your structural knowledge. And there is indeed an underlying structural problem.....there are hundreds of thousands of wood pilings that support buildings in much of central (old) Amsterdam. If these pilings remain below the water line, no problem. It is only when the top of wood pilings are above water that they begin to deteriorate, and thus cause subsidence of a building they support. This is an ongoing problem, and there are many construction firms that specialize in foundation renovation.

Right down the street. The leaning house at the corner of Brouwersgracht and Binnen Oranjestraat dates from about 1650.

It gets crazier:  not only are there crooked houses; many of the older houses actually lean slightly outward toward the street. This has been done intentionally to allow a hoist at the top of the building to have clearance at street level. Most older buildings have a hoist to haul heavy items to upper floors, because, you can't get that new IKEA sofa up those narrow steep stairs.

couple of boats

weed boat
Not that kind of weed, but actual weeds and vines growing on this boat. Notice the nice astro-turf deck!

House boat
Literally a house in a canal. Don't have any land? No problem. Just float in a platform and start building

Noorderkerk.......

It's right down the street, or specifically across the gracht.....a 17th-century Protestant church.

The church was built in the years 1620–1623 to serve the rapidly growing population of the new Jordaan neighbourhood. 

The Jordaan already had a church, the Westerkerk, but the city government decided that a second church should be built to serve the northern part of the neighborhood (the 'northern' part of the neighbor hood is like 8 blocks from the 'southern' part). 

The Noorderkerk became the church for the common people, while the Westerkerk was used mainly by the middle and upper classes. 

sounds kind of familiar.

In America, we use shotguns

As the widespread availability of drones is starting to pose security risks, Dutch police are taking a medieval approach to the problem, training eagles and hawks to intercept UAVs in flight.

https://www.rt.com/news/330931-hawks-eagles-intercept-drones/ 

window cleaner

and it was really windy!

IKEA?

Hit the Metro south out of central Amsterdam on Thursday. Went to this big box store called IKEA. It was crazy. You walk thru on a 'path' and see all these great designer items that I guess are authentic products made in the Netherlands! It was awesome! Man, I can't believe we don't have stores like this in America!

 awesome black table, 6 euros

Pete

The Cafe Westerdok cat!

We were here Friday evening as well as Saturday when we met up with Jan, a friend of Taze' (Professor Taze Fulford, Starkville!) from when they were both at University of Idaho.....

http://www.cafewesterdok.nl/?locale=en_US 

the 8 dog walker

goes by every morning