Oh Amsterdam, what a crazy place. It’s the only place we’ve been (so far) where you can find a bar, sex shop, cannabis “coffee” shop, and prostitutes within a block of a church from the 1300’s and a kindergarten. All this set in a beautiful city of canals where just about everyone rides a bike (rain or shine). The Netherlands attitude toward decriminalized marijuana and sex may seem a little too progressive for some, but once you’re there it surprising how little it seems to affect daily life. It’s like the people realized, “Hey, drugs are always going to be part of society and so is prostitution, so let’s just accept it, regulate it, set up areas for it and then we can worry about other more important things instead.” And everyone seems to be pretty happy with it. As for us, what happened in Amsterdam, was forgotten in Amsterdam …..
Can you find Sue?
The first thing you notice about Amsterdam was bikes, lots of bikes, oh and canals.
Amsterdam actually has more miles of canals than Venice and just a few blocks off the city center the streets lining the canals can be peaceful and quiet.
Because space along the canals has always been limited, the houses are all narrow but tall. To get furniture and other supplies up without climbing the incredibly steep steps, the houses are equipped with hooks for pulling things up by rope which are still occasionally used today. Also, you can see one of the houses in this picture is leaning out toward the street. It’s not an optical illusion, old houses all over Amsterdam are leaning due to their heavy weight on sinking pilings, some of them look like they’re about to fall over.
A multi-level bike parking garage. Like we said, the Dutch really love their bikes.
We rented bikes and decided to go where the road took us. We soon discovered riding in the city was like driving on a freeway in a different country, a bit hectic and confusing (you don’t want to get in the way of a Dutchman on his way home from work). We headed out of the city and got lost (literally) in Amsterdam’s massive parks which are only a short ride away.
The edge of the red light district. It’s pretty obvious what you’re headed towards.
With a takeout dinner in hand, we headed to the red light district to sit on the edge of a canal and people watch (as you can imagine it is some of the best people watching in Europe). The swans in the canal like to people watch as well and get aggressive when they see food. This one snapped at Graham’s feet but instead of our Indonesian takeout, it got a couple of (light) kicks to the beak.
The red lights of Amsterdam. It’s a little hard to see in this shot, but each of the red lit doorways has a scantily dressed “woman of the night” in it. It was like a vending machine of debauchery. Quite a weird place to walk through.
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