Europe 2026 – Day 14 – Amsterdam to Wroclaw

Most days Alina has been getting up before me, but today I woke up before my alarms to shower and wash my hair. When I was finished, Alina was still asleep. She accidentally forgot to set an alarm last night. We went down to breakfast, making our lunch as usual.  Then we returned to the cabin to finish packing and to leave the boat by 9 a.m. 

When we purchased the tour last fall, we also purchased an Amsterdam canal tour. We were able to leave our luggage on board until noon. We said goodbye to our new friends, Melanie, Brooke, and Karen, then set off for the ferry.

A few minutes on the ferry and we were at Central Station. We walked through the pedestrian cycling tunnel to Lovers Canal Tours, on the other side of the station.

They had a pair of giant orange clogs in which we posed.

The tour lasted about an hour. They provided headsets with the commentary about what we were seeing.

Here are a few of the sites near Central Station.

The “Dancing Houses” of Amsterdam are a row of 17th-century canal homes, along the Damrak waterfront, that appear to tilt and sway. Built on wooden piles driven into soft soil, these narrow merchant houses have settled unevenly over centuries, creating a “wobbly” look.

The Amsterdam opera house, officially the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, is nicknamed Stopera (a portmanteau of stadhuis—city hall—and opera). It faced massive controversy in the early 1980s, sparking protests and riots, because its construction required demolishing buildings in the historic Jewish Quarter, and it went massively over budget. The building’s white, modern facade and overall design led critics and locals to mockingly dub it “the false teeth”. It is quite different than most of the centuries-old buildings in the historic canal belt.

This nearby bridge has beautiful stone carvings.

The Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge) is an iconic, historic wooden drawbridge in Amsterdam, spanning the Amstel River. Built originally in 1691 and reconstructed in 1934, it connects Kerkstraat with Nieuwe Kerkstraat. Famous for its romantic, narrow design, it is illuminated by 1,200 lights at night and restricts access to pedestrians and cyclists. It also features in the James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever.

There seems to be an endless variety of facades among the homes in the canal belt.

I took a few videos during the canal tour to better capture, the endless rows of unique canal homes. Amsterdam also has 2500 houseboats on the canals which you can see in the first video. No new ones are allowed.

After the tour, we had coffee and food at Café Karpershoek. It is the oldest pub in Amsterdam. In 1606, the Karpershoek started as a guest house for the crew of the ships of the Dutch East-Indian Company (VOC). 

We then took the ferry back to the barge to pick up our luggage before the noon deadline.

On the way back, we saw a very tiny car using the ferry. These cars seem to be able to use the same spaces that bikes can use.

David and Dayle, Wayne, Cindy, and Mark are staying at the Hotel Neutraal, only a few hundred metres from Amsterdam Central Station. The rooms were incredibly tiny, but very expensive..

Alina and I are flying to her hometown of Wroclaw at 9:30 p.m., so we needed luggage storage for the day. The privately run business next to the station wanted €26 for a locker large enough for all of our stuff. So Cindy suggested that we could leave our suitcases at their hotel; that is what we did. We had to lug them up two flights of stairs, but it was worth it to save the €26. We might have to pay it yet, as when we return from Berlin next week, we arrive in the city about six in the morning, but do not fly out until six that night.

We then went on a walk to the Holocaust memorial, photographing scenes as we went. The crush of people in the area of the Central Station and the old canal belt area of the city was mind-boggling.

Amsterdam is aggressively curbing overtourism, aiming to cap visitor overnight stays at 20 million annually, with projections for 2026 exceeding 25 million. Key measures include the highest tourist tax in Europe (it increased from 9 to 21% between when we booked and when we stayed ), a ban on new hotel construction, closing the central cruise terminal by 2026, and restricting tourist-oriented shops.

Here are some of the scenes along the way.

The Dutch National Holocaust Names Memorial in Amsterdam, inaugurated in September 2021, honors over 102,000 Dutch Jewish, Sinti, and Roma victims murdered during World War II. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind, who also designed the Ottawa Holocaust Memorial, which Cindy and I visited a couple of years ago.  He also designed the Crystal edition at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The memorial features brick walls forming Hebrew letters for “In Memory Of,” with each brick displaying a victim’s name, age, and date of birth.

Our final stop before collecting our luggage was the Basilica of Saint Nicholas. 

From the front steps of the Basilica, we could see the beautiful building that contains an office of the municipal transit system, some restaurants, and some sightseeing boat companies.

We then collected our luggage, said our goodbyes, and headed to Central Station, where we purchased tickets to Schiphol Airport. I don’t think I’ve ever been on such a packed train as the one that we boarded. We had to stand in the door area between the first and second class compartments. Fortunately, it was direct to the airport and only took about 12 minutes.

Checking my luggage, and getting through security, was unremarkable and relatively quick. I don’t think our gate could’ve been any further from where we entered the airport, though, and it seemed to take as long as it took to check the luggage and get through security, to get to our gate.

We stopped at a shop for Alina to buy some tulip bulbs to take to her friends in Poland.

This large clock’s hands were a video of actual people joining the line and leaving it.

The plane was relatively small, and we had to take a bus and climb stairs to board it. So today we travelled by ferry, canal boat, foot, bus, train, and plane.

The flight was unremarkable. Wroclaw airport is quite small, and by the time we got to the baggage hall, the belt was already moving, and my suitcase came off first.

We got a taxi to Alina‘s apartment. By the time we got settled in and into bed, it was almost 2 in the morning.