Leiden, Netherlands canal boat tour

travel videos & photos at: townsofeurope.com/ with text, maps & links.
Leiden is one of the great cities of the Netherlands. 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/ 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 will be showing you in our series.
The route that we will be taking in our one hour boat tour goes through some of the most beautiful of the canals of the city in a big loop and then coming back to where we started.
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.
The boat company is De Leidse Rederij at
www.leidserederij.nl/c/

[@Time4aKiss]

5:15 - "We don't know if they're really studying, but they're at least inside." lol!

[@musichealing369]

Love you beautiful country Love you beautiful people One day I visit your peaceful &Neat country ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🙌😘 A student from south India👍❤️😍😍😘😍😘

[@sivayamsiva9343]

Wonderful place 👌👌👌

[@Tom-S1981]

Beautiful scenery and plenty to explore. Thanks

[@borderreiver3288]

so beautiful and peaceful...would love to live on a boat on the canals.....

[@user-er6ti5pj3b]

Ich liebe die holländischen Kanäle und die unkomplizierten Menschen.

[@caseylwr]

Njce video Dennis . Thanks for posting !

[@lancslass8]

Thank you Dennis. I've really enjoyed watching this.

[@ameenraed]

Really I thank you for this video,,, I was looking for this town but I didn't know the name for it,,, Thank you thank you

[@JimBoNJ1]

great vid, you should have also shown the poems wriiten on the walls thru town.

[@giekipfer9393]

Its a great video hope i can visit here soon😊

[@DipankarSinhaSarkar]

Awesome video, really enjoyed my 1 year stay in Netherlands

[@metalfyregaming2468]

Excellent and very informative video yet again. Kudo's for this. :) Did you know that Mayor Van der Werff offered himself up to the people of Leiden to be eaten during the Spanish war? Because the Spanish couldn't take Leiden by force, their intent was to starve Leiden out. And they nearly succeeded. Leiden and it's people were on the brink of starvation, and so the mayor eventually offered himself up to be eaten by the people. But the people refused this. And not much later a boy named Jan (or Jantje, which translates much to Little John) saw during a night a parade of lights marching away. It turned out to be the Spanish army retreating. He then found food that the army had left behind, which was a mix of potatoes, onions and carrots. Enough food was found for Leiden to survive. That's also why the 3rd of October (when we were liberated from the Spanish army) is still celebrated to this day and that food Jantje found, we call it "Hutspot" and it's the traditional food of Leiden during the 3rd of October.

[@denniscallan]

That's a fascinating story about the heroic struggle, thanks so much.

[@arhu74]

Unlikely that the original hutspot contained potatoes, so soon after the discovery of the Americas

[@arandomki]

Great movie.

[@zonzeven]

Very good video of the city where I live since 1978. Just one small point, at 8:14 I hear: "the Dutch king, William of Orange". He never was the King of Holland, his title was Prince of Orange (Principality of Orange, France, 1163 to 1713).

[@denniscallan]

You are correct, thanks...I realized next day, too late, but did label him correctly in the main movie kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZSXpWOui66MjcU Things get more confusing because there were two Williams of Orange, the more famous one being William III a century later who also was king of England, whereas the William who rescued Leiden, thus major Dutch hero, is often called William the Silent. Confusing%#^%@& Then he was assassinated in Delft in 1584 -- not much gratitude. Times were difficult back then.

[@leifblom652]

underbart som vanligt man blir aldrig besviken swede wiking

[@leifblom652]

@NorthernLights wikingar levde i sweden för 1000 yers ago dom upptäckte amerika sant eller fel ha en bra dag hälsningar swerige

[@joostvandenberg3113]

Ik live in Leiden

[@whentheworldwasatwar8717]

1:33 lol.

[@djopdam199]

President Bush had ancestors here not Obama

[@denniscallan]

According to your Tourist Information Office, VVV, both Bush and Obama had Pilgrim ancestors who departed from Leiden to America. Here is the TI brochure quote: "The ancestors of President Obama lived in Leiden. He is a direct descendant of a Leiden pilgrim family. Presidents Grant, Coolidge, Taylor, F.D. Roosevelt and the Bushes too have Leiden Pilgrims as ancestors."

[@djopdam199]

@@denniscallan thnx i did not know that

[@Fasna79]

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