Hot Dam
Amsterdam ROCKS! It's an incredibly beautiful, civilized and fun city.

More on our trip, favorite places, impressions of the city, food, smoke, tips and and lots of photos below...

We've hit some great cities in Europe but this was our first trip to Amsterdam, and we fell in love. It's a relatively small city and easy find your way around. If you're centrally located you can walk almost every where. And everyone bikes! so traffic and fumes are nothing like NY or London. The canals and buildings that line them are gorgeous. Like NY, each neighborhood has it's own character and you can tell as you walk the city when you've moved from one vibe to another.

The Amsterdamers are friendly and humorous, and love to talk about their country and where you're from. (And everyone speaks English.) The city has an awesome laid back attitude. Weed is legal. Life in Amsterdam is simpler, quieter and less manipulated by the media. The city's edgy, hip and so fukcing clean! And the streets seem safe. Amsterdam proves that a city with a relaxed police force, graffiti and street art, legalized low level drugs and prostitution can still be very safe, clean and civilized (they've been lying to us!)

Some favorite things we did:
- Walked as many neighborhoods as we could (like 10 miles a day.) The trip sponsors put us up at the Krasnapolsky, a fantastic hotel in the heart of the city. So it was easy to hit lots areas.
- Anne Frank House - So moving and touching, almost surreal. Connects you with Amsterdam's history and life during WWII.
- Symphony at the Concertgebouw - Amsterdam's beautiful concert hall and fantastic symphony orchestra. Mostly local crowd, incredibly polite, the audience held their cough's until the end of each movement. The hall is stunning with impeccable sound.
- Van Gogh Museum - even having seen many Van Gogh works, we weren't prepared for the intensity of walking through rooms of his work and moving through his life, madness and genius.
- Rijksmuseum - Great Dutch masters, the Rembrandts are incredible. Seeing all the art reflecting Dutch life throughout various centuries (city and county, people and places) added interesting background and richness to the whole Amsterdam experience.
- Canal Boat Tour - Tour is nice, you see a lot from an interesting perspective, but we were mesmerized by the precise navigation and maneuvering of the boat through the tiny canals and bridges.
- Markets, the city has tons. Big and small - food, junk, flowers; a couple are open all week, but Saturday is the big day. Loved a small one at the Wagg that had lots of local cheese, fruit, wine, bread. Vast varieties of bulbs are for sale at the central flower market.
- Red Light District - Wild, fun, all kinds of women in the windows (most work for themselves), negotiations going on. The sex shops have some hilarious toys and displays.
- Great coffee everywhere we went. The pastries were awesome too, the Dutch know flakey and buttery. Ditto the cheeses, chocolates and other stuff... (more food in a separate post)
- Smoke cafe tour, a do-it-yourself version (more coming on that too)

Couple tips:
- Walking the city is a fantastic way to seeAmsterdam's details... the neighborhoods, architecture, churches, shops, markets, and observe life and feel part of it for a moment.
- Find a grocery store near your hotel, stock up on water, juice, snacks & other stuff you need there. Water at small tourist shops was around $2 a bottle, at the grocery store it was .45 cents.
- The trams are cool and fast, but they only say the stops in Dutch so it can quickly get confusing, especially at night.

Airfare and hotel were provided in exchange for one month advertising on this site. Of course we made no promises to give the city such a raving review (or any review at all), but there's really nothing we can think of that we didn't like.

More Amsterdam!
- Chow Holland
- Like a kid in a candy store
- A room with a view
- Grounded