Travel with an Engineer ✈️ part 1

Amsterdam: A City Built Above Water 🇳🇱 

Under Amsterdam lie layers of peat, clay, and sand. The city had to be stabilized, drained, and protected from water — and in many areas, buildings were supported by piles reaching deeper layers of sand. 

But what fascinated me most was not just how the Dutch kept the water out. 

It was how they learned to work with it. 

Historically, systems of dams, gates, and canals were designed to manage the movement of water, even using tidal changes as part of the system. 

So the canals I saw while walking through Amsterdam suddenly looked very different to me. 

Not just beautiful canals, but part of a much larger engineering system hiding beneath the city. 

Maybe that’s one of the things I love about engineering: 

You can travel somewhere as a tourist, and still find yourself looking at the world through an engineer’s eyes. 🍪🌷