I’m on a long train ride from Interlaken, Switzerland to Venice, Italy and I realized that I’m way behind on my blog, so here goes.
The first thing most people think about when they think about Amsterdam is the Red Light District and the coffee shops where you can legally buy pot. Both of these things exist in Amsterdam. These coffee shops are everywhere and the city reeks of marijuana at night. My tour guide told us that Amsterdam is very relaxed about most things. Even if there is a law against something, as long as you’re not hurting anyone and not making it blatantly obvious, then you’ll probably be ok.
Apart from that, Amsterdam is actually a really nice city. When you walk around the city you are putting your life in your own hands, though. There are bikes everywhere, as well as trams, buses, and cars. I couldn’t believe how many people ride bikes here. It seemed like almost everybody.
Here’s a few more pics of the city.
These were as close as I could get to taking pictures of the Red Light District. They don’t like you taking pictures of it and will actually smash your camera or throw it in the river.
Actually the Red Light District was kind of disappointing. I always thought of it as a smaller version of the Vegas strip with lights everywhere and everything being all flashy, but it wasn’t really like that. In fact, it was kind of hard to notice what it was. Of course you see all the girls in the windows, but I guess the new mayor of the city closed down about a third of the coffee shops in Amsterdam and bought out the largest company that owns a lot of the windows in the Red Light District in order to give Amsterdam a better name.
Thinking back on it, I really didn’t do that much in Amsterdam. I did a free tour of the city, but the only other thing I really did was go to the Van Gogh Museum. They had an exhibition going called Van Gogh and the Stars of the Night. It contained one of my favorite paintings (Starry Night) and one very similar to it I think called Starry Night Over the Rhine. Pictures weren’t allowed so I pulled these 2 pictures off the internet to show you how cool these paintings are.
