Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel made a love connection there; want to follow in their footsteps? Find love (or just someone to sit canalside with) in Amsterdam at one of these hot spots:
Cafe Monaco -- This Rembrandt Square locale adds a touch of class to your average pub crawl. Rembrandtsplein
Kunst en Koffie -- Canal views, hot locals and--yes--legal marijuana make this cafe a great place to unwind at night. Tweede Laurierdwarsstraat 64
Vive la Vie -- Stop in this hole in the wall Saturdays after 11 for an intimate girl-meets-girl scene. Amstelstraat 7
Many travelers to Amsterdam are expecting to find something more than tulips and canals. It's a place where window-shopping means more than just looking at the latest fashions, and you can observe many of the kinds of activities not practised so publicly in other parts of the world. This famously open and free-thinking city even has a Prostitute Information Centre for anyone to learn about the industry; one-hour tours are even available, guided by former prostitutes.
So it's with more than a little concern that news from Amsterdam this week reports the iminent closure of almost half of the licensed businesses in the Red Light District. Licenses can be revoked when a link to criminal money is proved or--as is argued in this case--merely suspected.
Let's be honest, some of us just want to poke around Amsterdam to see a little of the other side; kind of like adventure travel. If they're going to take that away, we'll be stuck with New Zealand's Boobs on Bikes for entertainment and the way the police down there are complaining, there mightn't even be any good knockers for us to ogle.
Sean Wilsey, the author of the memoir Oh the Glory of it All, has been writing about his book tour over at McSweeney's. He stayed long enough in Amsterdam to get down a few notes:
[The Dutch] excel at drinking, and, as with texting, they are better at it than me. My first meal in the country, which was hosted by Oscar, began with mixed drinks and beers all around, continued through four bottles of Sancerre (for four of us), then tapered off into four more rounds of beers and mixed drinks. The Dutch do not like to leave their mouths unoccupied.
The Dutch wake up without hangovers. Hung-over on my first morning there, I had a long conversation with Susan Smit, a tall, blond former fashion model who is now a reporter for AvantGarde magazine. She asked me about memoir and about James Frey. When our conversation was over, she asked me about my plans for the evening.
"No plans," I said.
"Well, then," she stated with Dutch matter-of-factness, "you can come out dancing with me and my friends. I will text-message you at midnight."
Sigh. Somehow we don't think that we'd get to go model-dancing there if we went, but you never know.
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by egw
