The first is sooooo much an Amsterdam photo totally without it being cliché or without showing the picture postcard views. Whoever's been there and has taken a guided tour in these flat boats through the canals there knows how much this is "Amsterdam", too! Very nice.
And, indeed, your friend is a perfect model for black and white... and I like the fact that in this case you went for the "landscape format" for a portrait. The nice bokeh that your lens is giving you shows that she still is on that boat, I at least can make out as much, so the background adds to the photo in connection with the fact that it was taken in Amsterdam and not anywhere else.