Called the Venice of the North, Amsterdam is the constitutional capital of the Netherlands. Cut through a network of canals, the city is famous for its great art museums, picturesque tenement houses and a huge number of bicycles moving on the streets.
Amsterdam is ahead of Venice in terms of the length of the canals and the number of bridges. You can move on them by boats and water trams, and along the canals there are sidewalks and bicycle paths. On the banks there are several-story tenement houses with narrow facades. Many of them remember the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but a large part of the building is contemporary and only stylized to the old. The city's curiosity is also the numerous houses on the water standing on platforms or being developed, permanently moored barges and the world's only floating flower market, Bloemenmarkt.
The focal point of Amsterdam is Dam Square, on which stands a monument dedicated to the liberation of the city in 1944. In the area there is the Royal Palace and several historic churches, including the Nieuwe Kerk, where weddings and baptisms of royal family members take place.
Amsterdam is sometimes called the City of Museums for a reason. There are over 70 of them here, including the most famous Rijksmuseum, where you can admire the works of Dutch painters, including Rembrandt and Vermere. Equally fascinating is the Van Gogh Museum and the Rembrandt House, and among the many museum proposals you can also find such extraordinary as the Windmill Museum or the Museum of Hashish and Marijuana.
The fame of the city of debauchery is another face of Amsterdam. As in the whole of the Netherlands, marijuana is legal here, and the largest of the Cannabis Cup festivals here is to present new products on the market and choose the best cannabis species. In turn, the symbol of bodily pleasures is the famous Red Light District - De Wallen.
