My brief meeting with Amsterdam
Of course, that short time that I had in Amsterdam is extremely not enough to explore the city! I had a connection flight from Moscow to Lisbon with landing in Amsterdam and about 6 hours in order to quickly explore the city.
Amsterdam Central Railway Station
Actually Amsterdam has left strange feelings… on the one hand it is really old and very beautiful city, on the other – it is a city of absolute freedom where you can do absolutely everything. Here they have legalized prostitution, free sex relationships, homosexual marriages and drugs. Of course, there are many people who are looking for exactly that kind of freedom and go to Amsterdam for this. However, I prefer another way to enjoy the freedom. For me freedom is to discover new places and towns, breathe in the fresh mountain air, spending time with family and friends and much more. Therefore, the freedom in Amsterdam, this is clearly not for me.
My first impressions of Amsterdam
1) This is a beautiful old city, with beautiful architecture and cultural heritage. Every house here is a monument of antiquity, and together they create the impression that you’ve appeared in some European fairy tale.
Amsterdam Architecture
2) Amsterdam is a party city. Walking around Amsterdam, we’ve became quite hungry, however, we were very surprised that in the whole city there is absolutely no place to eat, although it was about 11 am. I’ve never been so happy to see the sign of McDonald’s, because at this “early morning time” we could eat only there 🙂 As I said earlier, we arrived on Saturday morning, and on Friday night the whole city is partying! Therefore, the demand for cafes and restaurants in the morning is very small, so they don’t open until lunch. The man in the pictures below became really tired waiting for the opening of the restaurant 🙂
Funny guy 🙂
3) It will be difficult for people with strict religious principles to buy a normal souvenir here. For me it was a shock, but 90% of souvenirs in Amsterdam are related to the sexual organs and drugs. Sorry, no photo for this time 🙂
4) Few people know that in spite of the legalization of drugs, import and export of them in Netherlands is strictly forbidden! I wonder how do drugs get there? Do they produce everything in local factories?
5) People say that Amsterdam is not Netherlands. The Netherlands itself as a country is very beautiful and absolutely not similar to the capital in terms of drugs and sexual themes. For this, many of Dutch people don’t like Amsterdam. But it is what it is.
6) Amsterdam is a city of bicycles. However, I have never seen so many bikes and bike lanes before! There are much more bicycles in Amsterdam than cars, they even have bike-parkings for thousands of places! I can hardly imagine how it is possible to find your own bike there…
7) Bikes are more often stolen than cars in Amsterdam. So on the street there are no expensive bikes. Most citizens drive simple and cheap bikes. But if “iron horse” was broken or became too old, they just throw it in the river, or leave in the street 🙂
8) Though there are not so many cars in the street, but they are still there, and they are very different. In Amsterdam I first saw a Tesla car (they were not in Russia that moment) and a very old Fiat (we don’t have and will never have in Russia)
Tesla
Fiat
That was my brief meeting with Amsterdam. Finally, below there are some more photos of the city 🙂
Madame Tussaud museum
Amsterdam channels
Sculptures
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Author – Dmitry Doronin
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