Another country down

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I'm out of Paris, so that's one more country finished. On my last day at night, I found an internet cafe that had the ability to connect a camera, but it was late and I didn't want to bother. Sorry guys (you can wait a couple of weeks, and I think I may find a good internet cafe here in Amsterdam).

I spent my last day in Paris, having seen everything I wanted to see already, looking for things to do. I ended up going to the Institut du Monde Arab (big rip off, they had very few exhibits so the museum was spartan, although the building's windows, which adjust as the outside lighting changes, are interesting), and then to the National Marine Museum at the Palais de Chaillot, which had model ships and was a bit more interesting.

Paris was excellent. It was everything I had expected and I can't wait to go back (which I will be for Spring Break, actually). I left it at 9:55 this morning.

I got into Amsterdam at 2 P.M. This city is very strange. 90% of the vehicles on the (tiny) roads are bicycles. There are very few cars at all in Amsterdam. Also, the city is so small you can actually walk everywhere (according to my tour book, the north end, Amsterdam Centraal Station, is a 25 minute walk from the Rembrandt Museum at the south end of the city). It took me 10 minutes to walk from the station to my hostel, and ended up being the hostel I had the least trouble finding thus far (I didn't have to ask anyone for directions).

Drugs are (as you all know) freely available here. When I got into the station, there was a place called "Drugstore", which I quickly noticed was selling actual drugs. It's a weird thing to see. Another weird thing: everybody speaks English in Amsterdam. I haven't had to use one word of Dutch since I got here, and I find myself adressing everyone in English and not once have I had any problem at all doing so.

In the hostel, I met a man from Scotland named Peter, who I went around town with for the day. His accent is very thickly Scottish so I needed to ask him to repeat things a lot (I have 0 trouble understanding the Dutch speak English, they all sound American when they speak it and have no audible foreign accent). We walked into a Smartshop (store that sells drugs and paraphenlia) and had a very interesting conversation with the shopkeeper (who I understood better than Peter, ironically). The shopkeeper actually mentioned he doesn't like drugs being legal, as he feels people are sitting in Coffeeshops wasting their lives away and going nowhere. He believed using drugs should be a spiritual experience and should not be simply used because they can be. It was something I didn't expect to hear from a man selling drugs (In addition to marijuana, psylocybin mushrooms and other natural drugs are completely legal and widely available here), and it sounded quite profound.

The Red Light District, like in Paris (which I visited the last night I was there to see the Moulin Rouge), is ironically safer than the rest of the city due to the increased police presence (here, on horse and bicycle) and the high number of tourists. It's a strange sight to see coming from the United States. Oddly, men freely sell illegal drugs in the RLD (Cocaine and ecstasy), despite the police being highly visible. There is absolutely no trouble there though (unlike in the Paris RLD, where every single threatre/strip club owner you pass by starts saying "Monsieur! Monsieur!", begging you to come in) and the dealers will not persist after you say no.

The hostel here is quite fine, although not quite as good as Le D'Artagnan in Paris. I got in here too late to visit anything, but the city is extremely nice and I look forward to seeing more of it (by bicycle I hope, now that I see they are widely available and safe to use due to almost no cars being in the city I think I'll rent one).

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Photos

Amsterdam
A photo that shows what most of the city looks like.

Eiffel Tower from the Palais de Chaillot
This is me outside the Palais de Chaillot facing the Eiffel Tower.

Moulin Rouge
The Moulin Rouge by night.

Window at the Institute du Monde Arabe
The highly advanced windows of the Institute automatically adjust to filter the light coming in.