Sunday, September 7, 2008

The steep stairs to our room in Amsterdam

1 comment:

Unknown said...

See, I had to worry about a stoned grandma going up and down those kinds of stairs. Did you see any of the really tight spiral staircases?

I don't know if you know the history, but the reason their buildings are so awkward is because when the cities were built there was a tax that specifically targeted the width of buildings. A little bit of structural engineering was a tax loop whole. If you notice many buildings still have a pulley system attacked to the top story that allowed them to lift things up without using those crazy staircases and pop things right in through the window, as was much needed because it's a port city and many of those buildings used to be small warehouses.