As for the whole paddling thing, it’s actually pretty
intuitive. It’s apparently quite normal to have one arm
that’s dominant and, once I’ve sent the boat careering
into the side of bridges a couple of times, I learn to steer
a – relatively – straight line in Coen’s wake. As we head
in the direction of the city centre, he points out his
favourite sights, among them the straw-thatched,
18
th-century Molen De Gooyer – one of the few
surviving windmills in Amsterdam. Nowadays, it’s
home to an artisan brewery. That’s progress.
It’s not unusual to
see the head of a
giraffe poking
incongruously
between the lime
trees in this part of
town,
thanks to the proximity of the Artis
Royal Zoo. The lanky beasts are a no-show today, but
there’s no shortage of rubbernecking once we’ve made
it out into the wider waters of the Amstel River.
Leaning over the pillars of the Blauwbrug, the
historic bridge that’s an architectural mash-up of a
number of Parisian bridges, a group of young British
men spot us coming down the water and treat us,
bizarrely, to a rowdy blast of Queen’s ‘Bicycle Race’.
Given how close we are to the euphemistically titled
Rembrandtplein ‘entertainment district’, I suspect they
may be a little bit confused.
A couple of hours into our journey, we hit the
Oudezijds Voorburgwal, AKA the most schizophrenic
canal in Amsterdam. There’s the five-star hotel Queen
Beatrix tied the knot in and some of the most impressive
monumental canal houses in Amsterdam sitting
alongside a heady gauntlet of knocking shops and the
kind of coffeeshops that don’t serve chai lattes. As bells
ring out atop Amsterdam’s oldest building, the Oude
Kerk (‘old church’ – the Dutch are quite a literal bunch),
I make eye contact with the near-naked lady who’s
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T H E C H A L L E N G E
A M S T E R D A M
