Amsterdam travel diary: Wednesday
When I went to Edinburgh, we took a Sandeman’s walking tour of the city. These tours are given by freelance guides who hire Sandeman’s to promote them; they are “pay what you want” tours, where one pays the guide at the end within their means and according to their satisfaction with the tour. In return, one spends about three hours tromping through the city, stopping at various locations for the guide to relate interesting stories and historical anecdotes.
Our Amsterdam guide was a woman named Berber, clad against the elements in a felt hat festooned in scarves. She was eager to point out that, of the three English-language tour guides that morning, she was the only native Amsterdammer, so we would be getting quite the inside story. We began the tour in Dam Square, and from there we went through the Red Light District. Berber described the links between Amsterdam’s prostitution trade and its role as a major shipping port. As we stood outside a church in the middle of the Red Light District, she explained the tenuous relationship between city, Church, and sailors and prostitutes. She mentioned the sale of indulgences, and how this led to the Netherlands…
