On your left hand side at the beginning of the street you can see a very old black house. It is one of the two wooden buildings only left in Amsterdam. It dates back to 1550 and as you see the brick supports have been constructed on both sides in order to prevent the building from collapsing. This house is called 't Aepjen (in the monkeys) after an old bar which is on the ground floor. Take a moment to have a look inside.It was the first bar where instead of cash sailors could pay with various objects they brought from overseas. Legend claims that sailors often paid their bills with monkeys which were quite common souvenir back then. This is still a nice bar, even though you can not pay with monkeys anymore. There is a saying in Dutch "in de aap gelogeerd" which literally translates "being in the monkey" and would mean having some serious troubles. Most likely this saying originates from this very place when penniless sailors paid the debts in monkeys.
Photo In 't Aepjen by brownpau is licensed under CC BY 2.0