Our Layover in Amsterdam

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Robert….At the airport I saw a flight going to Vilinius, I think it was full of ghosts and Georgians.

Amsterdam has a nice airport - very easy to navigate. Best of all, they have luggage storage (which we used to offload one of our packs). We decided to do a tour into Amsterdam that was 2.5 hours, we figured easy & brainless. We got into a little van and were on our way. Much of Holland is below sea level and the water is controlled with dykes. They have concrete “pillars” that are under every building that go way down in the ground to keep the buildings from sinking. Holland is actually only the west side of the Netherlands-it's not even a country.

Our first stop was a wooden clog factory where we got to see a live demo of wooden clog making. Pretty neat actually. They are made of Poplar wood and when dried at room temperature for a couple of weeks become water proof and resilient. The neatest thing was after the shoe was finished the man held it up to his mouth and blew…all of this water came shooting out the end of the shoe! Poplar is a very wet wood apparently…who knew you could blow water out of wood??

We stopped at windmill from the 1600’s that still is operating. It is weird to hear how important windmills are in keeping the water levels down. Our tour finished off with a drive through the city. In Amsterdam, 75% of the people ride bikes because driver’s licenses cost approximately $2000-$3000. Not only that, but there is an 18% tax on all cars and a 3 times per year road tax that must be paid.

We opted to have our driver leave us in the city and take the train back to the airport ourselves. Did I mention that Amsterdam missed the memo that we have moved to LA and are no longer accustomed to temperatures in the 30’s and rain?? Guess not…we had hats, gloves, and scarves…burr! The city is very nice with all of the canals.

We walked through the infamous Red Light District. Yes, there were prostitutes in the windows (there were actually a couple of good looking ones..and them some not so pretty ones)…most of them in skimpy undergarments. It was weird to see prostitution so up close and personal. Of course we also the "coffee shops" that double as hash bars...no, we didn't go in.

Overall impressions of Amsterdam is it is pretty, but not worth more than a day or two. We will probably go again on our way back to the US..then that is all we will need to see.

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