Mark and I arrived in Amsterdam around 7pm and the streets are decorated in bright orange. The Netherlands has a match against Italy in the Euro 2008 tonight; national pride is high. Pubs are crowded full of patrons wearing orange and shouting at the big screen playing the game. Even sex shops have their tvs in the front of the store televising the match.
Amsterdam is a bike friendly town. In fact the preferred way of travel is by bike and bikes are literally everywhere. One of the first structures we see while exiting the train station is three level parking garage full of bikes. Along all the bridges, sidewalks and railing are piles of bikes. There are so many bikes that people don't even lock their bikes up to the railing. Instead they just lock the wheels to the frame. As I walk around the street, bicycle bells echo throughout the crowds.
Our hostel is located a street over from the red lights on the edge of the actual district. The first night, we decided to walk around to try to find a place to eat. It is pretty weird seeing restaurants between "The Dildo World", "The Magic Mushroom Shop". We grabbed a cheap kebab place which made me miss the good kebabs of London all that much more. All the food in the area is overpriced and lacking in quality, but that's ok because people don't come here for food.
Amsterdam is full of canals and they quickly help us navigate and become landmarks when we get lost. The streets of Amsterdam are narrow and walking through them you undoubtedly run into some shady people shooting off their inventory at you: "charlie, coke, extacy". Red lights windows litter this area. Ladies of the night wearing nothing more than their underwear pose infront of these windows. They look bored most of the time and I started to notice some of them were texting on their phones. The funny thing is that it seems like only guys are out the first night.
There is an unwritten law that pictures should not be taken in the red light district. There is one bridge where people can get touristy pictures taken, but everywhere is strictly off limits. The ladies of the night all have eagle eyes for tourists taking pictures of them. While walking through one of the alleys, we ran into a situation where a wife sneakily took a picture of the red light windows. Immediately four prostitutes ran out of their windows and one of them grabbed the woman by the hair. They all shout profanities in perfect English at the woman and it takes her husband to push them all back.
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