The majority of Saturday was spent on a Free Tour (if you ever get a chance to do one, go for it, they're great) of Amsterdam. I got the scoop on weed, prostitution, why some Dutch houses are leaning (can't tell you why, you have to take the tour), and some strategies for minimizing public urination:
(click on any of the pictures if you can't see them well enough)
On a less humorous note, we also got a relatively concise history of Holland. I was impressed by how tolerant their culture has been throughout most of history and, obviously, still is today. One example- Amsterdam is more ethnically diverse than any other city in the world, with something like 170 different ethnicities in the area. Considering there are only about 195 countries on Earth, that's pretty impressive!
Some other random Amsterdam notes:
- Psychedelic mushrooms (the real thing, not the High Times crap) are completely legal here (at least until a certain law is in effect due to a French girl's recent death from mushrooms), while marijuana technically is not.
- If Amsterdam doesn't have the best public transit system in the world, it has to be close. There are countless trams, metro lines, Sneltrens (high-speed), bus routes, and bike lanes on nearly every street. There is almost no reason to drive a car, especially since finding (and paying for) a parking spot is often a fruitless endeavor. On a related note, almost every vehicle I saw was far smaller than your average American automobile, and that's coming from someone who drives a small car.
- From what I gathered Amsterdam has an almost identical climate to that of Vancouver or Seattle: cool and rainy most of the year, but with decent summers.
- The prices I usually encountered for food, drinks, etc., were very similar to those in Denver, only in Euros. Not exactly a steal if you ask me!
- With the amount of diversity I spoke of above, you can imagine the variety of restaurants and bars in Amsterdam. I only had some Indian and Turkish food, and went to a solid Irish bar where I don't think I heard a single Dutch word in two hours, but evidently such exotic cuisines as Indonesian and Surinamese are prevalent as well.
I have a lot more to say, but not enough time to do it. I think there will be a bit of lag time between when things happen and when they get posted, otherwise I'm going to get burned out from writing too much! Most of it is in my journal, though, so I should usually have something in queue for the next post....
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