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Amsterdam is kind of like its own little world. It’s a city of canals surrounded by suburbs and farm land much like a lot of other cities, but Amsterdam is certainly unique in its own right. Having recently been there along with the other 20,000,000 people who visit Amsterdam each year, let me share a few interesting facts about the place that you may not already know.

165 canals in fact. These canals have been around since the 17th century and are still used by locals to get around in low speed boats that take them from place to place. The bridges going over the canals are seemingly endless in number (a little over 1,200 actually), they’re everywhere! The canal system ring is really interesting and makes exploring Amsterdam really unique. There are about 2,500 little house boats docked all over the canal system and I assume people live on most of them. The buildings in Amsterdam are built on approximately 11 million (yea 11,000,000) poles that go about 15-20 meters into the ground through all the mud and unstable stuff into the harder soil beneath. These poles help stabilize the buildings as the soil shifts and sinks due to the city being built on the water. Many buildings in Amsterdam are leaning uncomfortably far out toward the street as you walk down it. They were designed to have a slight forward lean so that large appliances being hoisted up from the outside into the large windows on the upper floors would not smash against the building. But some of these old buildings are now more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa than anything else. I can remember actually walking to the other side of many streets just because some of the beautiful old houses were leaning so far forward over my head. Kinda freaky!

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