Amsterdam, the ultimate city of Freedom!

Amsterdam was pretty cool. It is a very laid back city. It is a pretty small city compared to Paris. When you walk around on the street it feels like a city fair everyday. They have a square in the center of the city where they have an open mic type thing every day and people go out there and perform silly talents. There were hoola hoops and unicyclists and other weird talents. They all speak English since they have American television.

The other cool thing in Amsterdam is that prostitution, gambling, marijuana, hash, and mushrooms are legal! America the country of freedom??? Not!! Everyone should go to Amsterdam once and check it out. There is nothing quite like this city. The entire city loves techno! They were having a giant techno dance party, about 40,000 people, with Armin Van Buren spinning the second day we were there. We couldn't get tickets since it had sold out in about an hour :(. We were bummed. It was called the Sensations White; everyone going had to wear white and they played Trance music. In August, they are having the Sensations Dark party with hard techno. We went out to another club on Saturday night and it played some pretty great techno too. Eric and I could have danced all night long! And yes, they dance just as stupid in Holland as we do in America.

To shop for marijuana and hash you had to go to the coffee shops that were located through out the city. One we frequented a few times was Abraxas. They had smokeable products and eatable products. They had brownies, bon bons, milk shakes, and muffins. They tasted pretty good :) It was a very friendly place with an awesome ambience. There is nothing like going into a coffee shop and smelling marijuana smoke as it fills the air. You can find the shops by just going down the alley's and smelling your way there. People would smoke on the sidewalk too. Not a big deal there. The only people that you could see high out of their mind were tourists.

The Red light district is really not a big deal. Your thought's about what it looks like is like 5 times bigger than it really is. It is pretty small actually. The prostitutes have little plastic boxes they sit in with a red light over them when they are in. If you are interested, you just go up to the box and talk with her. Before we went, Eric and I were thinking that the women would be ugly since it would be hard to find that many pretty women. We were suprised to find quite a few great looking women. You had women to fill all of the porn fantasies: school girl, bad girl, nice girl, teacher, black girl, asian girls (lots of them for all of the asian tourists), etc. They looked like the chicks in porn. They had a bunch of sex toy shops which sold some pretty crazy products, some of which looked painful. They also had a few live sex porno shows. There was actually a sex museum that was supposed to be sex through the ages, we didn't go in since it looked like a rip off. There was also the marijuana colleges and the museum of hash and marijuana. It was interesting to walk around and laugh at all of the asian tour groups that were walking around. You were not allowed to take pictures in the district so we don't have any pictures. All in all, the Red light district is mostly hype. Not a big deal really.

Besides all of that stuff mentioned above, Amsterdam has the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. They were pretty cool to visit. The Van Gogh museum was disappointing since they did not have many of his really famous paintings. No "Starry night". They did give a lot of history and had a lot of paintings I did not know he painted. It was interesting since he was crazy:) The Rijksmuseum had a good mix of art from sculptures and paintings to ornate doll houses and silver platters and cups.

Amsterdam was an interesting place to visit.