Leiden is one of the great cities of the Netherlands.
It has all of those historic and pictorial charms that you would hope for in a quaint
Dutch town -- a city of canals, pedestrian zones, historic buildings and bicycles -- in
many ways a typical Dutch town but in others, something quite special.
It has the oldest university in the Netherlands with 30,000 students among the 120,000 city
population.
One of the oldest cities of the country founded about 1000 years ago but with a young population,
and so many things for the visitor to see and do you could easily spend a couple of
days here: drop in on some of its 200 restaurants, 60 bars, thousand shops, many along the pedestrian
lanes, explore historic monuments such as this elaborate gatehouse through the medieval
wall, one of two surviving gates from the old days, get educated and entertained at
one of the half-dozen important museums and stay in one of the 22 hotels offering 3000
rooms.
Leiden is located just 40 minutes away from Amsterdam by train, or 20 minutes away from
the airport by direct train -- easy to reach yet like many Dutch cities it's overlooked
by most of those millions of visitors to Amsterdam who rarely venture beyond that big city.
They're missing out on a lot that the Netherlands has to offer as we will be showing you in
our series.
In this segment on Leiden we’re taking you on a canal boat tour.
It's a great way to get an overview of the city while sitting and relaxing for an hour
and watching the historic buildings glide by.
They say Leiden has more canals than any other Dutch city besides Amsterdam.
They extend for 28 kilometers within the inner-city and are crossed by 88 bridges, some of which
are quite low so you gotta keep your head down when you go beneath them.
I was lucky to take what turned out to be a private tour.
Well, nobody else showed up for the departure and Tim very gallantly said okay let's go
and took me on a one-hour boat ride.
He works with a very special boat tour company that relies on 60 volunteers to do most of
the driving and guiding – a lot of retirees and other interested residents of Leiden pitch
in and help out.
We are working with more than 50 volunteers.
They are all retired, so they have time enough, ha ha.
On the map you can see all the canals of Leiden and the route that we will be taking in our
one-hour boat tour, going through some of the most beautiful of the canals of the city
in a big loop and then coming back to where we started.
The name of the company is De Leidse Rederij, and our office is here at the back, uh-huh,
and we’ve got, so you’re right in the center?
Yeah in the middle of the center, and we’ve got 12 boats.
There are several other boat tour companies in town, of course, some using slightly bigger
boats and others with smaller boats.
You have a variety to pick from.
You’ll find a bunch of them in the main little harbor in the center of town.
Most of them are open-air without any roof or windows to block your view.
That works perfectly for most of the year when Leiden has mild climate.
However, in the winter they usually do not run and sometimes the canals freeze over,
so there is no boat traffic.
You'll see lots of boats cruising around with groups on board, but not all of them are tours.
A lot of them are just bunches of friends, people out for a cruise.
It's a major recreation here throughout the Netherlands.
And if you want you could rent your own boat, or you could rent a kayak and just go paddle
at your own pace.
Maybe go fishing like the guy in the backseat.
The water is surprisingly clean.
All the boats are older than a 100 years, and people live here permanently.
And they were ex-working ships before.
When they are here, they have to do enough for a reason, they lived on them, and they
are ex-sailing boats, and they can still.
So once a year they go for a little round and then they come back here for another year.
The bridge in front of us is the Rembrandt Bridge.
Yes Rembrandt is the most famous person born in Leiden and he lived here for quite a while
and began his career painting here.
His father ran a windmill and his mother was the daughter of a local baker.
The canal we began on is a branch of the River Rhine which flows right through the middle
of town.
We are leaving the River Rhine and we go to the left school to the Singel of Leide, and
that big and beautiful building here at the left, that was a school for sailor men.
But in fact was it a place for all the bad boys.
This is the University library, and you can see how many bikes standing in front of the
building.
How many students there are at least inside.
We don’t know if they’re really studying, but they are at least inside.
Some people say the canals are 3 meters deep: one meter muck, one meter bicycles, and just
one meter water.
We glide past a canalside park that belongs to the botanical gardens, the Hortus Botanicus.
It's the oldest plant collection in northern Europe, a lovely place to walk through, especially
this garden setting alongside the canal.
Every canal tour boat will pass by to admire the view.
We'll take you for a walk inside the garden in another segment of our visit to Leiden.
Up next is the world's oldest university observatory.
When the sky is clear then you can see those telescopes turning, everything is still working,
and today they are not looking by professionals, only by amateurs, and the reason of that is
Leiden has too many lights into the sky so you cannot see all the stars and planets.
Uhmm.
We have been cruising along the Singel, which is the outer canal that surrounds the old
town, originally dug in the 17th century to protect the city like a moat, the equivalent
of a medieval wall.
And now we’ve turned into the Vliet Canal or sometimes called the River Vliet.
It's a small portion of a longer canal that goes all the way to Delft, and it was very
famous in history because this is where the Pilgrims left Holland to go to the Americas.
And did you know that President Obama has an ancestor who was among those pilgrims from
Leiden?
Well it's another pretty canal and you'll notice that green algae floating on the surface.
It comes in seasonal blooms affecting many of the canals of the Netherlands.
Now cruising along on the Rapenburg canal that was the city's most prestigious back
in the 17th century.
Coming up on a peaceful green park that's the result of a disaster.
In 1807, a ship full of gunpowder blew up here and killed nearly 200 people, destroying
many buildings here and throughout the city.
And it was later redeveloped into this memorial park with a statue of Mayor Van der Werf in
the middle, who was a military hero back in the late 16th century and the battles against
the Spanish.
That war in the 1570s was a defining moment in the history of Leiden.
It was the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish occupation at the hands of Philip the Second.
Leiden was surrounded and besieged for an entire year by the Spanish, who were trying
to starve the people into submission.
And the Dutch came to the rescue by flooding the fields all around Leiden so that they
could sail their fleet of warships and defeat the Spanish under the leadership of the Dutch
king, William of Orange.
Now heading into one of the major canals of the city, Herengracht, a place where the nobles
and rich families live back in the 1700s, first dug in 1659.
While cruising along my guide is always pointing out some of the historical features, including
a most unusual retirement home.
And into the gap at the right side was a place for old couples.
If you were still, if you are still happy and altogether then you don't want to come
here because one of them goes to the left side of the building, and men to the right
side and even at the stairs and pets was also a yellow line, and only at breakfast you can
see each other.
Today there are living students inside and they're all mixed together, and not the women
on the left side, the men on the right side.
Do you have any idea why those ropes are used for, those ropes hanging above the water level?
We see our kayakers again paddling by these ropes that are hanging from the side of the
canal.
It was so cats could rescue themselves and climb out of the water if they fell in.
In the past 10 years at least 90 cats have been saved this way in Leiden.
It's a special invention that's unique to the city and has been copied elsewhere now.
Notice the little windows at the old-fashioned style where they tried to avoid the tax on
big windows.
Of course, most of the buildings that we see along the canals are residences in structures
that date back hundreds of years.
There also a lot of houseboats in the canals of Leiden.
Here's a big one.
Coming up shortly will see a long stretch with dozens of houseboats.
Passing this ridge we are leaving the Herengracht canal and entering a broad section of the
Old Rhine canal with marinas.
As mentioned some of the tour boats have a roof and windows which makes it comfortable,
but I prefer the open-air experience.
This wide canal section is in a place where several waterways come together and form this
marina, which would've been a small harbor in the old days where bigger ships from the
intercity canals would stop and offload their cargo to smaller ships that would go through
the little canals of the inner-city.
Now were re-entering the big canal that goes all the way around the old city.
It forms a major intersection with the Old Rhine as well.
And here we find collection of interesting historic sites.
Most impressive is the Zijlpoort.
It's one of the eight original gates that led into the city through the medieval walls.
Now there are just two of these gates remaining.
It was built in 1671 in classical style by a local architect.
Next to it on the big canal is your typical drawbridge that can be opened for larger ships
going through, and some historic cannons.
After all, this was part of the fortifications of the city.
The Dutch were very proud of the high quality of their cannons.
A huge ugly building rises from the canal, most uncharacteristic of central Leiden.
Well, it was the flour factory that worked for 100 years and then it was abandoned 20
years ago and it's being redeveloped into a series of deluxe condominiums and shops.
Now we’re coming to that stretch of canal with some working ships, some of which are
hauling cargo along the rivers of the Netherlands and perhaps all the way down the Rhine into
Germany, and many houseboats for living on board while permanently docked.
In olden days Canals formed the chief roadways of the country and the main streets of the
towns; instead of heavy carts and straining horses there were broad-beamed barges and
brown sails, an easy way to travel and move cargo.
But why so many canals you might wonder?
Well the Dutch were forced by necessity to construct canals, with so much of their nation
below sea level.
As fast as they tried to make roads, the stones or bricks sank into the mud and left things
soggy and boggy.
So with their usual enterprise they started upon canals, and have not ceased constructing
them for nine hundred years.
With their thousands of windmills they pumped water out of the marsh and into the canals
forming farmland and waterways.
The Netherlands is a country of canals.
It may have cities, roads, trains, farms and quaint buildings, but it is a country of canals
before all.
The canals set the tune and make this nation unique on Earth.
Nearly all the Dutch towns are amphibious, but some are more watery than others, especially
Leiden.
For the new visitor it is quite unusual but after a while one gets accustomed to the ever-present
canal and the odd spectacle of watery streets.
These canals are of all depths and widths, from narrow ditches running at the side of
the road, crossing fields and gardens all the way up to the North Sea.
By means of this grand network of waterways nearly every town became a port, every village
could communicate with the sea.
Altogether, the canals in Netherlands combine to make the waterways of Venice look like
a little puddle.
And not this bridge but the next one is the only bridge in Leiden with a roof on top of
it, uh-huh, and the reason of that, and that time you can buy your flour, flour to make
bread, on this bridge.
And sometimes it will rain in the Netherlands, and when the flour was getting wet you cannot
sell it anymore.
And that’s the reason why they made a roof on top of it.
And it’s also very nice.
Flour Bridge.
No, in Dutch.
In Dutch, Koornbrug brug.
I’ve taken a lot of pictures of this bridge, it’s beautiful.
We are almost done with our journey, reaching the confluence of canals at the town center.
And this is where the Rhine, the two Rhines come together?
Yes, this is.
Where we are at the New Rhine, and the Old Rhine, they come here together at the Water
Square.
This is a great place to hang out – one of the most popular spots in town for the
canal café terraces.
You'll see more in one of our later segments on Leiden, and you'll find a few hotels in
the center.
One of the old city hotels of Leiden, it’s called New Minerva, and all the five buildings
are part of it.
So one, two, three, four, five.
And now we're almost at the end of the tour.
And now you know almost everything about Leiden.
Okay.
Thanks, Tim, and now it's time for a beer back at one of those canal café terraces.
I'll see you next time