Cycling The Dam

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Geo: 52.3738, 4.89095

Amsterdam exceeded my expectations, I really enjoyed the city and what it has to offer. There is much to see and do there if you can drag yourself away from the "cafe's".
Waking up in the morning and seeing the cloudy and horrible weather didn't fill me with great pleasure, but in the end the weather had turned out perfectly sunny. It was amazing because the weather before and after our day trip to Amsterdam was wet, cold and rainy. We couldn't have timed it better.
So we all jumped in to the car and ended up in central Amsterdam. With the limited time we had, we decided it would be the best to hire bikes from the central station.

The biking culture in the Netherlands is insane, so many people on bikes, hundreds of bikes intertwining each other in custom made bike-parks and I like that it's a very eco-friendly thing to do, especially in a very flat country like Holland.
We started by cruising the streets and stopped at the flower market where there are a few cool shops and stalls around. Afterwards we rode around for a bit more, immersing ourselves in to the city.
After a lunch stop we continued to checkout the infamous Red Light District. True to it's legend it is quite an odd place, many a sex shops, sex shows and horrible, sometimes fat and old, ladies in underwear standing in doorways. It's not too appealing, but someone must be going to these places.

We then hopped back on the bikes and rode through Jordaan on the west side of the city with it's beautiful canals, churches and buildings and followed the canals around to the east side. While Claire and Corentin went to visit the Ice Bar, Anna and I went to visit the only windmill in the city. It was a great convenience to rent the bikes as we felt that we were able to see more in the limited time we had.
As the night closed in, we dropped off the bikes and visited a few last places on the way back. The souvenir shops have some funny things in there, but a lot have the main themes of the city, sex and drugs, but I can assure you there are more things in Amsterdam than just these.

It had been an amazing day, great weather, company and great times and I would recommend it to anyone.

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