Amsterdam! A city set in and on the water, divided by endless canals, with hundreds of tiny bridges and quiet avenues. A city populated almost exclusively by bicycles and trams, with relatively little room leftfor cars. A hodge-podge of architecture with only an element of quaint beauty to tie it all together. And of course, a city of utter and unabashed liberalism, where Coffeeshops rarely serve coffee and a red light means not that you should stop but rather that you should GO for it. A strange, comfortable, unfamiliar, and wonderful city.

We coast in late in the evening, and struggle by tram and metro, to find our way to our hostel. The town is small but our hostel is well distanced from the center so it takes a while to get there. We drop our bags and head into town. For the sake of cultural understanding, and not for Any other reason, we enter a Coffeeshop, simply to investigate, to see what it is all about. The next three days are a blur from which little memory can be clearly recalled. The following may have actually occured, or could be totally imagined.

...We wander the streets for hours every day. We leave in the morning with some vague destination in mind, and delight in the discoveries we make as we get progressively more and more lost. The streetsare all short and curving and narrow, with long complex dutch names, and there are dozens of indistinguishable canals. We wind through endless streets, and even at the end of several days have barely managed to get a grasp of the city's layout. We find incredible stores and wonderful food and we enjoy various views of the city. We dodge cyclists (there is a bike lane EVERYWHERE) and stand on the quiet little bridges enjoying the view, equally entrancing during day and night...

...We eat massive plates of pasta and a pizza called "Con Frutta." Literally a pizza covered in bananas, peaches, and pineapple. We eat kebabs (our favorite budget fare) and enjoy the twang of eastern spice. The best part though, by far, are the XXL Muffins, sold exlusively at a little cafe we discover and ranging from ChocolateCherry to PearSpice and Blueberry and every wonderful flavor that can be imagined. In fact, although they are huge, we both agree that XXL could be a bit larger....

...We find some of the most incredible shops. There is an utterly elegant cigar shop made exclusively of rich mahogany selling a million types of cigars, beautiful long wooden pipes (including an exact replica of Bilbo Baggin's pipe, which I almost buy impulsively), and bizarre cigarettes flavored like mango and pina colada. There is a "fantasy store" that plays beautiful cello music and is all green vines and wooden carvings and there is a massive tree in the center with faces carves into it. The store sells fairy models and elf costumes and gnome paintings and all sorts of magical jewelry and charms and potions. It is Fantastic and Fantastical. There is an unbeleivably classy liquor store, selling elegant bottles of "Gentleman Jack" and Van Gogh's favorite absynth, and other drinks unspeakably lovely, charmingly presented, and of course a million miles outside of our price-range. There is a music store with the most astonishing collection of Classical recording and sheet music that I have ever seen. I spend hours their, poring over scores and looking at arrangements. There is also an incredible Theater and Film Bookshop, my favorite theme for a bookshop ever. There is also a hilarious store whose windows are filled with peanut butter, cheezits, crackers, chips, candies, chocolate and everything a hungry tummy could desire. In other words, the Ultimate Munchies shop. Needless to say, we resist temptation and do not enter...

...There is a beautiful flower market along the banks of one canal, open every day and releasing waves of perfume and the heavy sweet smell of damp earth. It is beautifully colorful and entrancingly alive...

...The street musicians are incredible and ubiquitous, especially a man who stands alone in the square with a stand up base, playing incredible Rolling Stones covers, with a beautiful warbling voice and incredible style and pizzaz...

...There is a giant chess board in the center of one plaza, where two old men duel in a tense chess game as spectators shout advice. We watch fascinated as the whole conflict slowly and captivatingly resolves itself on this bizarrely large scale...

...For some reason the main square is full of mimes in Grim Reaper costumes. We fail to understand what they are doing, but they are probably designed to terrify stoned tourists. They are terrifying...

...We go to see a sketch-comedy show called BOOM!CHICAGO, inspired by the likes of SNL. It is hilarious beyond compare, and the audience is rolling around laughing as they do various group improv making fun of facebook, politics, and of course, the Dutch...

...And the Dutch, it should be mentioned, have one serious flaw. Everything in the city is unbearably expensive. There is not one free museum (London has dozens and the Louvre is free) but each museum costs 18 euros or more. Food is exorbitantly expensive (save for little gems that we meticulously discover) and there is literally nothing in the town that you can do for free. Even the church has a massive entrance free. The dutch, we decide sympathetically, are tightfisted bastards. But likeable, notheless...

...Everyday we wander through open markets, which are everywhere. We sort through mountains of records and look through pile of books. We examine piles of clothes and various bits and bobs. We buy very little, but the searching is still fun...

...We spend hours every day in bookstores. Amsterdam has a long avenue lined with every type of bookstore imaginable, including an expensive, impressive Waterstones with unnecessary black and gold decor, and tiny little used bookstores run by little old dutch men. Our favorite is a massive multi-leveled book store with an astonishing collection. We go into the various stores to relax and sometimes stay long enough to read a whole book (Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead takes exacty 2.5 hours to read, if you are curious). I buy Little Lord Fauntleroy and Casey buys Life by Keith Richards. We read voraciously, often in bookstores, sometimes in cafes, and occaisionally in coffeeshops. Bookstores are a wonderful place to be, and Amsterdam has a wonderful selection...

...And the coffeeshops. Wow. They are dark and smoky and the bartenders, inevitably stoned and cynical, are often surly. But the atmosphere is relaxed and fun (duh...). The range of people inside is bizarre, from burnt-out hippies to ancient old men and young dutch kids and awkward tourists, and plenty of extremely excited kids visiting the cty for the first time. We go to one called the Dolphin, with a dreamy underwater theme, and murals on all the walls. Another, called Baba, has a massive statue of Ganesh and various Hindu art all over the walls. Some are party places, some are chilled out. At one of them at TV plays bizarre animations while text rolls by underneath telling you what to do if you get too high. It is hilarious. Music pounds entrancingly (or obnoxiously) from the speakers. The shock of publicity is difficult to get over. The shops sell seeds of every variety of marijuana, magic mushrooms, and various bizarre drugs with unpredictable effects with names like dreamwave823bn4 and miteflower94nf94. It is strange, utterly strange and fun...

...And the red light district, which we seek out one night, unsure how illicit it will really be, is shocking. Along one canal every window has a red glowing light above it, and beneath beckons a lady of the night, suggestively beckoning you towards her from behind the glass door, waving and calling to you. Revulsion mixes with awe and you stumble onward, not sure if what you are seeing is real. They are, of course, people of all shapes and sizes, meant to appeal to every market. It is a phenomenon. People crowd in the streets and stare, not looking for action but rather in awe. And of course there are endless sex shops and shows and a hilarious store called the Condomerie which sells, well you can probably guess...

...The evening that we are leaving town, we do something we have been wanting to do for a long time. We go to a little shop in a bad part of town and we select the plumpest, juiciest looking specimen in sight, one with luscious pink curves, and we pay a very pretty girl a ridiculous amount of money for a taste of her...dragonfruit. (Haha, gotcha). OK seriously now that is not innuendo, a dragonfruit is a fruit, a pink and green, flower shaped thing that had been eyeing us from the window every day. The inside was white and full of seeds and looked similar to the inside of a kiwi. It tasted somewhat like a kiwi too, but sweeter, full of tang and honey. It is unbeleivably delicious. One of the best fruits we have ever tasted. Having enjoyed it, we set off for the train station, and leave the wonderous and bizarre, unlikely and likeable, liberal and liberating, revolting and revelling, amazing and awe-inspiring Amsterdam.