Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, with canals and bridges intersecting through the different districts, each with their own personality.  I was excited to get to the Netherlands to eat lots of cheese and I did! With lots of cheese shops having free samples, we tried variety of different cheeses: smoked, aged, sheep, pesto, chilli and even honey and walnut flavour. Amsterdam is also the city of bikes. Almost everyone in the city owns and rides a bike rather than a car. The sidewalks are full of parked bikes and you have to be very alert when crossing the road!

Canal outside our place

Canal near the red light district

and another canal

Amsterdam is supposed to be one of the most tolerant cities in Europe and I definitely agree. The tolerance of the city is largely reflected in the infamous red light district, where many women practice the one of the oldest professions in the world, prostitution. Since being made legal, prostitution has sort of been accepted in Amsterdam and is not hidden behind closed doors. In the red light district women advertise their freelance services by standing behind a glass door under red lights, waiting for customers to knock on their door. These girls leave little to the imagination with their outfits and there seems to be a girl for everyone’s taste; fat, thin, young, old, Asian, Indian, you name it! Arvi enjoyed walking through this area and somehow we seemed to take more detours through it than necessary…. The red light district itself is a very safe area and we often saw Dutch families walking past the women in the windows, with their children in tow.

Cheese! 

Another thing Amsterdam is famous for is their ‘coffee shops’. These shops sell coffee but also sell a large selection of marijuana. While selling marijuana is still illegal, the police have chosen a different approach to tackling the war on drugs. They turn a blind eye to marijuana sale and usage in an effort to put more resources into stamping out hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. The strange thing is that this approach actually works, with Amsterdam having some of the lowest levels of hard drug use. It was also interesting to learn that in terms of Marijuana usage, Amsterdam is not even in the top 5 countries, as the majority of sales come from tourists, not the Dutch locals. 

during our walk through the Vondel park

I also celebrated my 25^th birthday in Amsterdam. Birthdays are weird when you are travelling because I feel like every day is a holiday anyway! We spent the day sight seeing and ended up walking for around 9 hours! First we went to check out Vondel park, a huge park with ponds, gardens and lots of big, old trees. After checking out some street markets we headed to a pancake house to enjoy some delicious Dutch pancakes. 

Lunch time

In the afternoon we visited the Heineken beer museum. It was very interactive and presented really well, what a great marketing tool! We enjoyed watching the old Heineken ads from all around the world. The best part was probably the beer tasting and the 2 beers we got at the end of the tour. We ended our day with yet ANOTHER detour through the red light district, just so Arvi could make sure that nothing had changed from the previous day, haha!

lets cook

first we mill

inspecting our beers

clean and crisp

Heineken!

Off to visit Krista! Yay!

Leah xo