Xandermind

E2 is easily my favourite site on the internet.

Well, check that out. I’m one of the the only ones here putting this one down! I suppose I should explain… I didn’t find the experience of visiting Amsterdam all that enjoyable, but I might give it another shot one day. People love the dam, so what was wrong with it for me? I just found it way too inundated with tourists. Understandably I was one, but you wouldn’t have caught me dead with my family walking through the red light district making fun of the professionals there (so disrespectful and unnecessary) or throwing trash in piles on the dirty streets. Due to the sheer amount of drug-addled tourists staggering through the streets there was naturally a vibrant abundance of cracked out characters pushing charlie and theiving and so forth, and this just led to some tension that I found unpleasant. The weed wasn’t anything better than what you’d get here in Canada, though it did have fancy names and stories to go with it, but that hardly justifies the high cost. One time I was eating some reasonably tasty food on a patio (can’t remember exactly where) and some grub came up and nabbed my meal right off my plate and walked off with a smile. I was too flabbergasted to do much more than gape at the sheer audacity of some of the jerks I ran across in this city! I could go on – the essence of my complaint is simply that downtown Amsterdam was dirty, expensive, and overhyped. I should have spent more time in the outskirts by the sounds of it. I really enjoyed the rest of Holland anyway, just not the star attraction! And this is coming from someone who does love to party and is certainly in no way repressed… I guess I just appreciate a bit of class, and this city seemed like it had none – not in the areas highly frequented by tourists anyway!

Despite my poor experience I will most likely return some day… I won’t stay in the core this time however – I’ll be out at least as far as Vondelpark, and probably even further. Anywhere but in the center again! Overall, I would highly recommend visiting the rest of the lowlands instead of getting lost in a cloud of smoke in downtown Amsterdam…