Amsterdam... my home away from home for 4 months
I sure will miss this beautiful city!
I got these facts in an email from my good friend Jeff a few months ago...
- When you land at Schiphol Airport, you are actually four meters below sea level.
- A quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level.
- The Dutch are the world experts on keeping back the water / sea from over running their country and turning it into another Atlantis. During the hurricane Katrina disaster it was the Dutch the USA government turned to for help on how to repair the levies in New Orleans.
- The Netherlands has more than 4,000 km of navigable rivers, lakes and canals.
- Holland was one of the six founding members of the European Union.
- Amsterdam has 70 glass-topped canal boats.
- The name Amsterdam comes from the combination of the river Amstel and the Dam that was built on it in order to found the original village know today as Amsterdam.
- Amsterdam has over 300 coffee shops which can legally sell up to 5 grams of soft drugs to each person.
- Amsterdam boasts more museums of any city in the world, measured per square meters.
With over 70 major well know museums in Netherlands of which over 40 are in Amsterdam.
- 75% of the entire worlds flower bulb production comes from Netherlands
- Over 70% of the world's bacon (poor pigs) comes from the Netherlands
- Holland has around a thousand original still working windmills
- Holland has three times as many bikes as people Holland has over 15,000 km of bicycle lanes
- Holland and the Netherlands is the same country
CLARIFICATION: thank you to Adrienne for her thoughtful insight. "Holland" is not technically the proper name for the Netherlands. However (wikipedia tells us) "Holland is a name in common usage given to a region in the western part of the Netherlands. The term Holland is frequently used to refer to the whole of the Netherlands. This usage is generally accepted but nevertheless unofficial."
Holland... Netherlands... whichever... boy will I miss it!!
It's been an amazing amazing 4 months. Done lots. Seen lots. Met lots of people. I'm also happy to be going home to see my wonderful family. Wouldn't want to spend Christmas with anyone else =)
O Canada, here I come! 5 days...
I'd like to clarify that Holland is an incorrect name for this country! The two terms aren't synonymous! In fact, the country's only official name is the Netherlands. Geographically, Holland only refers to the central part of the Netherlands which consists of 2 provinces out of the country's 12 provinces. So Holland is IN the Netherlands but Holland isn't the Netherlands.
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