Where in the World is Chelsea Gibbs?: Getting to Know Amsterdam

Amsterdam... how to begin...

We read about these free (tips only) walking tours and decided to try it out. One good thing about Amsterdam is that everyone speaks really good English. It's been a real challenge trying to communicate to everyone else in the 3 other countries we've been to so far. It was raining this morning, but it turned out to be a really beautiful day. The sun came out by the time our tour started and it probably got up to the low 70s. The tour lasted 3 hours, and the guy that was our tour guide was young and really personable. So we set out around the city, which is really beautiful. Although Venice is most famous for it's canals, Amsterdam has over 100 canals as well, plus the water is cleaner.

We got right down to it on our tour. Our first stop; the red light district. There are actually 3 in Amsterdam, but this was the most popular. It wasn't anything like I expected. I imagined it as a real dirty, dark, sad place. We were walking and then the group stopped, and our guide said welcome to the red light district, and I look to my left and boom! Hello mostly naked girl, in a window, watching us, with a red light across the top. I pictured girls literally in windows, like at home. These are more like glass doors, that they stand in. The "red light" above them is like a fluorescent red bar that would light up a Budweiser sign. We continued walking, past several other girls, and not 25 yards down was a pretty big church, a "coffee shop" where the pot is sold, and a kindergarten. Yep, all right there together. If it weren't for the naked girls in the windows, I wouldn't have known it was anything special at all. I will say, the first girls we saw were decent looking, and the further down we went, they were more unfortunate looking. Just being honest. Our tour guide warned us not to take pictures of them. He said he had a tourist act like he was on his phone once and he was actually taking pictures, and the prostitute ran after him and beat him black and blue with her stiletto. I made sure to point my camera in the opposite direction.

Next, we basically just walked all through the streets and he pointed out various interesting things. Amsterdam really is very pretty, especially when it's not pouring rain. Yesterday, right before we got here, they had a gay pride parade down the canals, so there was a lot of broken glass and such in the streets, and confetti and all that, but other than trying not to step on glass we really enjoyed walking around. We were led through a former nun residence (which he didn't call a convent so I'm not sure how that works) that had a really beautiful courtyard with lots of flowers and dozens of hydrangeas, that are my favorite in particular. I love white hydrangeas, and they're really hard to come by, but they are everywhere in Amsterdam.

The tour guide showed us lots of coffee shops. In Amsterdam, coffee shops are where you buy weed. Technically, they aren't supposed to advertise it, and they can't offer it to you. You have to go in and ask for a menu or ask for it yourself. However, in plenty of places, instead of advertising the actually weed, they advertise other things like bongs, bowls, seeds, etc. and you'd have to be a complete moron to not know that you could buy weed there. You could probably get high by walking by those places a couple times. The guide showed us a famous place where he said lots of celebrities go, and where a scene in "Oceans 12" where Brad Pitt and George Clooney smoke in there. The guide said that tourists will go into coffee shops, buy a joint, smoke it like a cigarette, stumble out, not know where they are, panic, and call 911. When the 911 people show up, all they do is give them a cup of sugar water and a 400 euro bill. Regardless to popular belief, marijuana is technically illegal in Amsterdam. People just don't care here. They have a very live, and let live attitude.

So, that was pretty much our day. We sat down and hung out with our tour guide and some other people that were in our tour afterwards, including a guy and a girl around my age that went to Carolina. They weren't from NC, but it was crazy meeting someone that went to school right up the road from me. They were very nice and really chatty. We enjoyed talking to them. I think mom especially enjoyed having someone to talk to other than me. I tried to go shopping again after the tour, which was an epic fail. I guess I'll just wear the same jeans and two shirts for the rest of the trip. Everytime I see something I like it's 150+ euros. It finally started to rain again around 6:00. It gets dark really late in Europe, not till at least 9:30. Tomorrow, hopefully the rain will hold out again and we can rent bikes!

Best things about today: The walking tour was awesome. We had good weather for it. Really enjoying Amserdam so far!
Worst things about today: European fashion frustrates me.

The red light district. The "windows" are on the left. You can see the "red lights" which are the red bars going across the top.

Another angle of the red light district. The church is on the left, the coffee shop in the distance. The girls would be on the right and the kindergarten would be back behind me past the church.