Truly Amsterdammed and blasted!!
Written: Nov 15 '03 (Updated Nov 24 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Just so much to go and do and see.
Cons: Makes for a mighty long review!
The Bottom Line: There's something for everybody in Amsterdam.
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| cr01's Full Review: Amsterdam |
If you need variety in your vacation then a short stay in Amsterdam will probably fit the bill. Amsterdam is a city with many activities to choose; from blatant sex tourism to culture, from wandering down bustling busy city streets to cycling down quiet backwaters, you can make your stay in Amsterdam what you want it to be. It’s also true to say that for English speakers, Amsterdam is “easy” – many Dutch speak English far better and with less strong and confusing accents than the British do.
After reading most of the 115 reviews posted on Amsterdam at Epinions, it seems that for most visitors the attraction of the city revolves around its sex and drug activities. While I can recommend Amsterdam certainly as a place of liberal attitudes, to visit Amsterdam purely for these rather base reasons seems rather one dimensional and there are many attractions out there for those less fascinated by the easy availability of drugs and sex.
Of course, purely in the pursuit of producing a fully comprehensive review, I just had to attempt to cover all bases!
Amsterbuildings
The thing that really strikes you about Amsterdam is the low rise architecture of the place. Outside of the very heart of the city are streets of canal centred and tree lined traditional merchant houses, perhaps three or four stories high. Of course there are more modern areas of concrete and brick apartment blocks and flats, but there is more than enough of the original Amsterdam remaining to offer that abiding memory.
Unfortunately, because so much of the city is built in the same way there are few focal points for the visitor to get acquainted with. However, the canals all follow the same semi circular arc, and so if you really get lost you can just follow the canals round to get to the other side of the city, although it would be quite a detour!
We were fortunate enough to be staying near the Anne Frank Huis and the Westerkerk church with its distinctive gold crown on top of its square tower. This meant that we never managed to get truly disorientated. One of the big problems I personally encountered was that the street names are very similar to one another – near our hotel, two parallel streets were Bloemstraat (street) and Bloemgracht (canal). A lot of the streets were similarly “doubled up” in name. Unless I was very observant with the street signs (and my dyslexia didn’t help) I would struggle to find the exact street I was hunting.
In the centre of town, the Royal Palace and the National Monument at Dam Square are worth a short linger.
One of the best ways to see the streets of Amsterdam is to take a boat tour. The one we took left from close to the Rijksmuseum. The seventy five minute tour was € 9 ($10) per person. While the views of the streets from canal height was worth the ride, the explanation of just which bit of canal we were travelling along was rather boring and intrusive, even without the four language translations.
The tour amply demonstrates that there are few buildings in Amsterdam of particular note; it is the whole that is interesting. One of the best parts of the boat tour was the trip out into the main harbour, behind Amsterdam’s central train station, with the modern apartment blocks of “New Amsterdam” on the other side glinting in the sunshine in the distance, proving that Amsterdam has its more modern and non-touristy aspects. Also here, are the original docklands and buildings of one of the first multinational companies, the United East India Company. The scale of the buildings from the 1600’s demonstrate just how much of Amsterdam’s wealth was created through trade.
The more energetic amongst you can hire a paddle boat and meander up the quiet canals, which I think I would have much preferred. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a willing volunteer to share the peddling with me, so I will have to save that pleasure for another day.
You can also hire a bicycle to do your touring. As the roads are flat and narrow (but often cobbled!) bicycles are ideal for getting around. This time, I was the reticent soul who refused to hire a bike. Roads in Amsterdam are very busy with both cars and bikes – however two of our party had a great couple of hours cycling around the quiet streets of the Jordaan on theirs.
Amsterflowers
At this time of year, with the leaves falling from the trees and the dark nights stretching from 5:00 PM to 7:00AM, my thoughts always moves to our tiny patch of garden covered in bright spring flowers and bulbs.
Of course I just had to take advantage of all that tulip and daffodil bulb choice in the Amsterdam markets. I chose blue and orange flowers for my display next year, and also bought enough bulbs to produce a small pack for each of my seven work colleagues as well, purely in order to get a cheap joke about bringing them back some "grow your own from Amsterdam"!
My advice is to shop around, as quality and price vary tremendously. In the US, you have to hunt down bulbs specifically suitable for import into the States – they have a special notice on them, which I presume means that you won’t get your precious cargo confiscated at customs. And yes... you will have to pay more for these!
I didn’t find my bulbs particularly cheap, but I certainly got far better choice than I do in the local markets at home.
Amsterculture
I am always simply amazed at the variety of museums to visit in Amsterdam. During my three visits to the city, I have only ever visited a small proportion of the places that I would love to see.
Anne Frank Huis
On this occasion, as two of our party had never been to Amsterdam, a must-see was the Anne Frank Huis. I must confess to having mixed emotions about visiting this house. On the one hand, here stands a powerful symbol to the inhumanity of the Nazis and the terror of racism, which should never be ignored; on the other stands a large queue, and another inappropriate invasion of this most moving of spaces by a never ending troop of visitors.
On balance, I do believe that the Anne Frank Huis is worth a visit. Downstairs is the jam ("jelly", as I believe you American folk would describe it) factory and warehouse that Otto Frank ran, and upstairs the tiny annexe where the Frank family and the van Pels family hid for almost 20 months until the hiding place was betrayed, and the families were carted off to various concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Belsen where all but Otto Frank perished.
The very positive thing about the place is that the foundation hasn’t attempted to recreate the living quarters of the Frank’s and van Pels. After the families were removed, their belongings were trashed, stolen and taken away. All that really remains are the pictures of film stars that Anne had placed on the wall of her room, in order to personalise and brighten up her isolated existence and a few other sparse signs of evidence that the families lived here.
Another thing that remains in the annexe are Anne Frank’s diaries, which a worker of Otto Frank discovered and kept for safe keeping immediately after the family’s were captured. It’s very touching to think that Anne dreamt of these diaries being published as a book, called "The Secret Annexe"; even more so, when you consider that she died just scant days before the liberation of Belsen.
Despite the hoards of tourists trouping through the house, the museum does capture some feelings of those desperate days. The families had to stay quiet during working hours, and had a radio with which to listen to the goings on of the outside world. Anne also received an occasional film star magazine with which she could read, passing those dull hours of waiting. Windows are blacked out, and you get a sense of what the family must have felt as you yearn for those simple pleasures – "what’s happening outside?", even "what’s the weather like?"
The final bright spot of the museum is the tribute to those brave folk who supported the hiding families, bringing them food and provisions so that they didn’t have to risk going through the streets of Amsterdam themselves. There is some speculation about who it was that informed the Nazi’s of the families hiding place – certainly some of the workers in the factory guessed and discovered that the families were hiding.
I would recommend that you visit the Anne Frank Huis early in the day, and avoid weekends if you can so as to avoid the queue that snakes up the street at the front of the house. It currently costs € 6.50 ($7.00) for admission.
Very near the Anne Frank Huis is the Homomonument, another testament to the all inclusiveness of Amsterdam society, a monument to those living and dying in the Nazi regime with pink triangles sewn to their clothing – the gay casualties of the holocaust, and also a memory of a more recent holocaust in the gay community but caused by AIDS.
Amsterdam Historical Museum
To get a good grasp of how Amsterdam was founded and how it expanded, the Amsterdams Historisch Museum is well worth a visit. It is located on a side street a little way away from Dam Square.
The museum goes through the history of Amsterdam from its founding in the 1300’s with the creation of solid land from marsh through the use of dams to channel water, to its rapid growth through the importance of trade. After a slow period of decline as those nasty French and British took supremacy over the waves and trade routes, we explore all the way to modern day Amsterdam. It was fascinating to learn that Amsterdam was once Spanish, and that Napoleon also held the city for a while (that guy sure got about!)
Many of the displays are focussed on portraits and paintings of key figures and buildings in the history of Amsterdam – the rich burghers who ran Amsterdam for themselves and trade, the building of the town hall, and the key buildings in the city. There was an interesting display and tape recordings of the four clarions within the towers of the four main churches in Amsterdam – built around 1650, and still ringing true to this day.
The more interesting parts for me were the displays of life in Amsterdam during the Second World War, and the holocaust which lost the city of 80,000 Jewish citizens.
I also enjoyed the contemporary displays, and lingered a while at a display of contrasting stories of a dozen or so lives of children from the twentieth century living in Amsterdam, from a school friend of Anne Frank (who also perished in the camps), to a child from a commune in the 1960’s where children were encouraged to have free spirits and do exactly as they pleased. I was frustrated that these displays ended with childhood – it would have been fascinating to see how they all had ended up.
Electric Ladyland
For a review of this quite frankly weird and wonderful museum of fluorescent and phosphorescent art, go and visit: Electric Ladyland
I also promise a forthcoming review of the Van Gogh Museum soon!
Amsterbeer
One of the great things about Amsterdam is its compactness, which means that you can do a lot of slow exploring on foot. Of course all that wandering around art galleries and down pretty canal side streets is very thirsty work, and you find yourself popping into one of the many bars in the town.
A lot of these bars are fantastically traditional. One bar near our hotel had a wooden seating platform above the bar area, which made for fantastically atmospheric drinking – the interior can’t have been changed for 200 years. Our host was a suitably portly gentleman with a thick woolly beard.
Many of the bars have old wooden chairs and tables – the tables are topped with old rugs for keeping your beer spills mopped up. Of course, if you prefer your bars more modern and trendy, then Amsterdam can cater for you, too!
Amsterdam beer ranges from the hefty, sweet wheat beers (which are also anything up to 8% proof!) to the more standard and forgiving brews of Heineken and Amstel.
Amsternosh
As befits a large city, there is a great deal of restaurant choice. Dutch food in itself tends to be rather stodgy and unexciting, so we concentrated on international restaurants for our main evening meal, and contented ourselves with a French bread sandwich or mini pizza from one of the many fine bakeries in the city for lunch.
One of the heritages of such a wide trading nation, is the diversity of its current population – a thing certainly to be celebrated. There are many quality Indonesian restaurants together with other European cuisines, such as Italian and Tapas.
An absolutely fabulous meal (unfortunately in cramped, smoky but atmospheric surroundings) was to be had at Casa Peru, the first Peruvian restaurant I have ever frequented. The restaurant had an interesting Amsterdam coffee shop/Peruvian décor blend! Friendliness was the order of the day, as I was sat almost as closely to the next party, as I was to my friends!
I had a tasty and interesting chicken soup, followed by a fantastic steak with creole sauce and vegetables. I certainly enjoyed the tangy orange flavoured sauce. I also nabbed a little of my travelling companions Goat and bean casserole which also was excellent.
The meal came to € 130 for four ($150), including a couple of bottles of wine, a glass of traditionally made Peruvian lemonade, and tip.
Casa Peru is on Leidsegracht.
Amsterstoned
I’ll start with the obvious; if you aren’t interested in exploring the Amsterdam drug and sex culture then you might prefer to now whizz onto the rating section at the end of the review.
Soft drug use is tolerated in Amsterdam – however, please don’t get carried away with the thought that cannabis is a legal substance here. Yes, you probably can wander through the streets with a big joint in your hand with no hassle, but don’t imagine that the locals will particularly approve. Likewise, to light up a joint in a “respectable” bar or restaurant is a bit of a social no go zone.
Amsterdam has a large number of coffee shops (bars) where cannabis can be bought. You can generally easily spot the type of place. They may well have a Jamaican flag stuck on the window outside. The coffee shop I visited had a small clue with its name – "Cheech and Chong’s"!
If the coffee shop sells cannabis, then they will have either joints for sale on the counter, or a small menu board above the till. They will also have a supply of smoking papers, and a small piece of card with which to make a roach or filter for your joint.
Some coffee shops don’t really sell anything except for cannabis. Cheech and Chong’s for example didn’t have any seats, but just a walk in area; you could only buy cold non alcoholic drinks to take out with you.
Some bars don’t sell cannabis but are happy for you to smoke your lungs out if you wish. Again, the clue is not only with the sweet smell of burning cannabis as you enter the building, but the free supply of joint papers on the bar, but lack of cannabis menu board.
You can buy your dope via the pre-made joint or by the single or double gram pack (there are 30 grams in an ounce). The downside to the pre-made joint is that you won’t know how strong it is; it may blow you away, or it may give you nothing. Some shops will sell you cakes, which are ideal for those who want to try, but don’t smoke.
We bought 2 grams of Northern Light, which is fairly strong local grass (dried leaf). You can buy resin (dried sap) if you wish, but I have personally always preferred the buzz from grass. It cost us € 11 (around $12). This quantity kept the four of us (and my three travellers on this trip regularly smoke grass) going for the three days we were there, and we had to leave a small quantity behind!
My advice is to be very cautious with this stuff! The Amsterdam dope tends to be very strong stuff indeed, so mix in lots of tobacco. I would make my joint very light; you can always have another one if you think you need it. If you buy a cake remember that digesting the cannabis takes you longer to start to feel the effects. Just eat part of the cake at first, and see how you go. It’s easier to add to get pleasantly stoned but impossible to do anything if you have taken too much.
While the effects of overdosing on cannabis tends to be pretty mild (usually wobbly legs, sleep, perhaps passing out and being sick – the last two being a most dangerous combination if you are alone!), it can be a long way back to your hotel to sleep off the after effects.
It had been almost a year since my last dabble with cannabis and so I was pretty cautious. My travelling companions a little less so. Nevertheless, it still took us a couple of hours to wobble our way back to our hotel – stopping off in a couple of bars in order to rest our legs and giggle inanely over a glass or two of Amstel larger.
I was deliberately keen to avoid being in such a state in the busy centre of town or the red light district. While Amsterdam is a pretty safe city, potentially someone is on the look out for a tourist not fully in touch with the real world in order to take advantage. In the more genteel and beautifully quiet Jordaan area of town around our hotel it felt safer to wander around.
OK, you may well ponder why anyone would want to put themselves through this just to get high. Well, it’s your choice, but it’s a nice happy high. It’s also less damaging for your body than getting drunk on alcohol. For my part, I think it was a little bit for old time’s sake!
While decriminalising cannabis seems to have made cannabis smoking almost respectable and keeps the kids away from harder drugs, it is very easy to get hold of other drugs on the streets if you so wish. On previous visits to Amsterdam, I would get a nudge, and someone would be whispering “Coke, Crack, Hashish?” very softly in my ear. I’ve obviously reached the age of respectability as on this last trip (oops… tour) no one offered me hard drugs; although I have no doubt they were there.
Be warned, like getting involved with any unregulated and illegal business, you can get more than your fingers burnt if you decide to show interest in these wares. If you are not interested, then simply shake your head and wander on.
The approach of the Dutch authorities on cannabis also raised another interesting point; what do they do with newer style drugs. For example, should Ecstasy now be decriminalised? Although the approach of the authorities towards drug use is interesting and adult, it is not without its problems.
Amstersexed
There is a small area of streets just off the town centre that is known as the Red Light district. We visited the red light district fairly early in the evening, while it was busy and touristy. It certainly is strange to see those pretty girls wearing nothing but swim wear, parading themselves in the windows of the small booths that line the streets. Even more strange was the unabashed men who you could occasionally spot either entering or leaving the booths. Curtains are drawn when business is being conducted.
There are a couple of very narrow alleys in the red light district, which for me have more atmosphere than the main streets. You can picture being transported back a couple of hundred years, when the sailors were in town. The area has been associated with prostitution for around 700 years.
The most disturbingly visible sights are the products available in the sex shops, their window display of moulded plastic objects, tacky handcuffs and the like were enough to make my eyes water and my buttocks clench.
We stopped for a beer in the evening air, just to watch the passers by milling around. Be warned, your beer will be the most expensive in Amsterdam (OK, it would be much more expensive in some of those hostess bars) but the atmosphere is good.
In the main, the crowd are mixed and good natured. It is illegal for girls to street walk for trade and so women visitors to the area will not get accosted on the street. It is the tourism that keeps the area from being a sleazy dangerous place.
Local politicians will defend the red light district as being an area where both visitor and worker can be safe. Girls (no, I didn’t see any “boys”) are regularly given health check ups, and work as part of the main stream economy with all the rights that this entails. However the reputation of Amsterdam as a prostitution capital has also led to cheaper less regulated areas appearing. Tales of Eastern European girls told they will get work visas, and then being tricked of their passport and forced to work in the sex industry are commonplace. While the acceptable face of the sex industry might appear innocent and sanitised – a dirty underbelly of exploitation exists even here. For me, that taste is too unpleasant.
For another "safe sex" experience, you might want to wander over to the sex museum on Damrak near the main train station. This is a fairly small building on two floors where you can explore the sex industry through the ages. The museum also boasts some quite appalling but strangely alluring automatons – a flasher and an ugly woman. The false body hair is something else!
As we spent half an hour wandering around the museum, the giggles of a group of English women viewing the photographs of every kind of copulation imaginable were audible throughout the museum. My only other comment on this place is to mind where you sit; another imaginative automaton may await!
Amsterfinished
Whatever your interest in Amsterdam, be sure to take plenty of energy and enthusiasm with you – it doesn’t matter how long you have, you can be certain you will have to leave something unexplored for your next visit!
Amsterlinks
Want to visit a very groovy place and learn about glowing rocks? – go & visit Electric Ladyland!
Need somewhere central, cheap and clean to stay in Amsterdam? - what about the Hotel van Onna?
Flying in on KLM? – see the Flying Bus
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cr01 asserts his right to be associated as the author of this review – 2003-
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
cr01
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Member: Chris
Location: Yorkshire, England
Reviews written: 443
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In snowy Yorkshire. Dusting down the Sledge.
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