Amsterdamoramas

While in Amsterdam, I tool a couple of panoramic photos with my trusty little Canon which, coincidentally enough, comes with a panoramic function that lets you take multiple pictures to be stitched together in the image editing program of your choice (Photoshop CS3 for me). First, we see the Dam. This plus the Amstel river gives Amsterdam its name, or so I was led to believe by the canal tour. Admittedly, I was not able to hear all of this because the boat was crowded and the Spanish family near me would only stop talking loudly during the Spanish bits, leaving me, the English speaker, a bit out of luck.

One sees very quickly while at the Dam no evidence of water being held back by man- or beaver-made structure. Either it is so large that I was standing on it or the name migrated over from another part of the city. Again, answers were not forthcoming.

My second panorama is a shot of one of the wider canals of Amsterdam. Natives will probably recognize it immediately. I have no idea. Street names were posted on the sides of buildings, and were in fact reasonably handy to navigate by using the Amsterdam rule of thumb: think in circles. Everything past the harbor is built in a loose loop. I wish I had planned my trip better and bought a book with an actual foldout map in place of the dummy map my Frommer's guide came with. It looked good enough in the bookstore, but I realized soon enough that it did not have all the streets listed when I folded it out and tried to navigate by it. I had a similar fear in Amsterdam that Brandi and I had when we first got into Rome: that bands of thieves would stalk me the moment they saw me holding a guide book and knew I was a tourist. The only thing that happened when I held a book and a quizzical expression was a nice man who looked like he was on the way home from work asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said "no". I had scarier moments getting Euros out of the ATM, when I was approached by a scraggly-looking man of indeterminate age speaking German at me and clearly looking for some kind of handout. I walked away quickly. Following the usual big city safety precautions has served pretty well in all the cities I've visited so far, so, yes, a small amount of paranoia serves me just fine.