Amsterdam Travel Guide

Amsterdam, city of art and history, is the capital of the Netherlands. Amsterdam, sometimes called A'dam by the Dutchmen, is the economic capital, cultural and policy of the Netherlands. The seat of the government is in Den Haag/La Haie. Amsterdam is known for its channels which surround its centre town and form like a fabric of spider. Although often represented like the capital of the defects, the city offers a whole cultural and artistic panorama: shops of clothing vintage, rooms d' multi-field and alternative events, clubs of jazz of reputation, museums d' arts, an opera

" Yes! To listen to their heavy steps, on the fatty paving stone, to see them passing heavily between their shops, full of gilded herrings and with jewels color of died sheets, you undoubtedly believe that they are there, this evening? You are like everyone, you take these good people for a tribe of syndics and merchants, cash their ecus with their chances of eternal life, and whose only lyricism consists in returning sometimes, covered with wide hats, of the lessons of anatomy? You are mistaken. They go close to us admittedly and yet, see where their heads are: in this fog of neon, juniper and mint which goes down from the red and green signs. Holland is a dream, Sir, a dream and of smoke, smokier the day, more gilded the night, and harms and day this dream is populated of Lohengrin like those, slipping by rêveusement on their black bicycles with high handlebars, funeral swans, which turn without truce, in all the country, around the seas, along the channels. They dream, the head in their coppered clouds, they roll in round, they request, sleepwalkers, in gilded incense of the fog, they is not there any more. They left to thousands kilometers, towards Java, remote island. They request these gods grimaçants Indonesia with which they furnished all their windows, and who wander in this moment above us, before to hang, like sumptuous monkeys, with the signs and the roofs in staircases, to remind these nostalgic colonists that Holland is not only Europe of the merchants, but the sea, the sea which leads to Cipango, and these islands where men die insane and happy. This decoration, that Albert Camus collected so well, hardly changed centuries since.

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