What surprised me most on the first day in Amsterdam was the leaning buildings. It is common to see houses deviating as much as 5 degrees from standing straight. The picture on the right presents one of the streets where the buildings fan out: you can easily see that the nearer house is leaning back away from the street while the further ones are leaning towards it. Amsterdam houses are built on wooden or concrete piles sunk into clay and sand. The piles do not reach solid ground, since it is quite deep. I guess leaning buildings is what you get as a result.

Another picture shows one of the many house boats in Amsterdam.

I've got another 1700 pictures from the trip on my hard drive, so I will be starting to put them up little by little.