Counting Bridges on One Afternoon

The number came in a booking message, as an aside. After the address, the time and the length, a guest added: "Crossed forty-three bridges today, I counted." He had walked from the museum quarter up to the Jordaan, looped around the western canals, come back down through the Nine Streets and returned to his hotel near Rembrandtplein, and somewhere along the way he had started keeping a tally.

It is a good number to think about, because it explains something visitors often find puzzling: why a flat city can leave the legs so tired.

A city of small climbs

Amsterdam has more than fifteen hundred bridges, most of them over the canals of the centre. The majority are short, low, brick or stone arches with a gentle hump in the middle, just high enough for a canal boat to pass under. On foot, each one is a few steps up and a few steps down. Nobody notices a single bridge. The legs notice forty.

Going up uses the calves and the back of the thigh; coming down uses the front of the thigh, which works as a brake. Do that forty times in an afternoon, on brick that is not quite level, between stretches of cobbled pavement, and it becomes a modest hill walk spread across the city without a single hill in sight.

How the count adds up

The canal ring is laid out as a set of horseshoes, one inside the other, with small streets running across them like the spokes of a wheel. Every spoke crosses every canal, so walking from the outer ring to the centre means four or five bridges in a few minutes. Wandering along a canal and crossing back and forth to look at the houses on the other side, as visitors do, doubles it. Forty in an afternoon is ordinary. Some visitors cross sixty.

What the guest booked

He asked for ninety minutes at half past seven, and wrote the message from a bench at about five. It was his first booking with the house, so the reply asked for half of the ninety minute fee ahead and told him who was free at that hour. He paid by card, walked the last stretch back, showered, turned the heating up and waited. The knock came a little before half past seven.

The line about the bridges was not necessary, but it was useful. It told her, in a sentence, what kind of day it had been. She still decided what the session would include, as every therapist does, and explained it before beginning. But she arrived knowing where the day had been.

A small game for your own walk

If you are walking the canal ring, try counting. It turns a pleasant wander into a small game, and it gives you a clear answer at the end of the day when you wonder why your legs feel the way they do. It also gives you something to put in the thread.

The practical side

Bridges are narrow and busy with bicycles. Keep to the pavement at the side, look both ways before stepping off a bridge onto the road, and do not stop in the middle of a bike lane to take a photograph. Wet brick is slippery, so take the downslope with care after rain.

Bridges with names, bridges with numbers

Every bridge in the city has a number painted or fixed somewhere on its side, and many have a name as well, often after a local figure or a building that once stood nearby. Visitors who start counting sometimes switch to collecting the numbers instead, and end the day photographing little plaques on the stonework. It slows the walk down, which is no bad thing on a day that is already long. It also means that the legs take the bridges at a stroll rather than a march, and that difference shows up by the evening.

After the count

A walk of that kind usually ends around five, when the light starts to change and the terraces fill. That is the moment to sit, have a drink of water and send the four lines of the booking. Whatever the total on your own tally, it belongs in the thread next to the address and the hour.

After a long bridge walk, ninety minutes is the length most visitors choose. The window is forty to sixty minutes from confirmation anywhere in central Amsterdam, and the figures on every profile on the roster are the same at every hour. For the route itself, the page on the canal ring covers what walkers ask for once they are back.