Amsterdam

I would just like to start this post by saying that it doesn’t matter how much you have heard or read about this city, there is really no way to prepare yourself for what you will see.

First of all, the city is beautiful. Great restaurants, great shopping, great museums and galleries. I loved being in this city, even for only a short while.

My ultimate favorite part about this city was the amount of bike riders and bikes everywhere. I couldn’t walk a block without seeing at least 50 bikes. And everyone from every age group imaginable was riding a bike somewhere. It was breathtaking.

Another gorgeous part about this city was the canals everywhere. There were bridges to get around on almost every block.

So. I guess now I will start in on the prostitution and the drug use. It is exactly how it is described in books and films and wherever you have heard about Amsterdam. I went out exploring in the Red light district in the evening and was asked by a man if I wanted to go somewhere and smoke and drunk; I politely declined and when he smiled at me I realized that he had GOLD teeth. This was only the begging of my night. The rest of the night was filled with tons and tons of red lights in windows with half naked girls behind the glass; who would tap on the glass when men walked by to get their attention. As if they needed any help getting attention. There were streets that were so narrow that when I walked down them I could have spread my arms out to either side and touched two glass windows with naked girls behind them. On every corner there is a sex store of some kind as well as a live sex show or something of that nature. I walked around this town as if in a dream almost not sure what to believe and what to assume was only imagined.

While in Amsterdam I visited the Sex Museum, a photography museum called Foam, ate my first Thai food in months and mostly explored a whole new type of city that I couldn’t have imagined in my craziest dreams.

From what I have read about this city it seems very progressive and open-minded, which I guess it must be since so much is legal there. One thing that I noticed was the amount of bike police that were present in the Red Light District at night, it made me feel safer knowing that they were around but also made me think that perhaps it wasn’t the local people of Amsterdam that were getting in trouble, but most likely the tourists that come to the city to party. I couldn’t help but think of how annoyed most of the locals must be with the pot head tourists who come to the city just to sit around and be totally out of it.