The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Just about every street corner, and many of the streets, have shops or businesses on the ground floor. Living above a book shop would be OK, but not a restaurant!

I consider these to be front gardens. Many of the houses on canals will have a garden in the back, but a few maintain something in the front too.

Often when a big remodel happens on the canal houses, they keep a traditional look, but with nice clean lines.

Rounded doors and windows. It’s not too common to see, but sometimes the corner of a building will be rounded so that doors and windows can be squeezed in. Yes, the front door is curved, but it isn’t as easy to see as the curved window that’s above it.

Some houses don’t lean forward, they lean sideways. Usually, it’s because something has gone wrong with the foundation, or it can’t handle the weight of some remodel that was unforeseen when the original foundation was put in. Read more about that here. Either way, I do enjoy seeing the leaning houses.

The forward tilt, usually for hooks. Since it’s difficult or impossible to get furniture up the steep staircases in most Amsterdam homes, it has to go through the windows. Often, houses tilt forward so the furniture doesn’t hit the house when it gets pulled up. I suspect some houses tilt because they’re sinking too! You can even buy stock photography of these house hooks too.

Filled-in windows. Sometimes I think the designers of the building wanted uniformity, even if some of the openings were never going to be used as windows. But sometimes it really looks like windows that were filled in. I really don’t know why.

Bridge views. Some bridges are big enough that you don’t even notice them as a bridge, just a road or tram line. But some are pretty nice to look at.

Building down into the water. Or maybe, letting the water rise up your walls. If you come visit, I’m happy to take you to the little restaurants that are on the water’s edge that you can see in the photo on the left. The view from the white spot is the photo at the bottom.

House plaques. If you look closely enough, you can find a variety of them on the canal houses. You can even buy photos of them from this site. They usually represent what the house was originally used for, or what the owner’s profession was. Although I suspect are just nice pieces of art too.