We caught the early morning train from Berlin down to Amsterdam, arriving before lunch on Monday morning. Our accommodation was a room in an apartment in the centre of the city that was built 400 years ago in order to store the archives from the city census in the early 17th century. It is only ten minutes walk from the central railway station and is on the main street that runs down to the city square, just two minutes walk from the red light district.

Being so close to the city, we were able to come and go a number of times each day. We were only in this accommodation for about 40 hours, and I think we had to put our boots on eight times to go outside.

Our room was in the loft, with curved vaulted rafters supporting the ceiling, and the windows and shutters opening to the 400 year old church across the road. The loft meant we had to climb three flights of stairs, so steep they were like ladders than normal stairs. The last of the photos in the gallery below is an aerial photograph view of the concentric canal belt (grachtengordel) in Amsterdam, on which a red circle has been placed over the apartment at 17 Hoogstraat.