AMS - Amsterdam Schiphol

It's my birthday! Well it was on Friday. And I was 28 again, but this time in Holland. The passport man and the check in girls at the Movenpick Hotel all wished me a happy birthday - and at the hotel, I got a packet of cookies too! Except they are marzipan cookies :(

So without much further ado, here is the worst winter seen in Amsterdam in quite some time... all the crazy dutch were out in full force, and who knew they owned so many pairs of skates!

Dam Square, below, is the centre of old Amsterdam, as a palace though it is little used, kind of bland....


Markets abound, even in the record cold. Amsterdam is very artsy, so book and art markets are everywhere on the weekend.


Food stop, Rembrandt Sq and the Cafe Luxembourg.


This is a cofffeeshop - the words merged indicate it is a marijuana house. Seperated, you'd just get cafe and maybe some broodjes (sandwiches) - upstairs smoking, downstairs not. The Japanese owner, from Nagoya, didn't want his face in the pic, but he was very friendly, feeding me bowls of grapes, as well as space cake and good coffee.


These cantilever bridges are used less now, but the old canal system was supposed to feed the entire area just as roads are today.





Smartshops are still open, they sell mushrooms and peyote etc., didn't go in one, but I thought these were gone now. Right next door is a shop selling juggling gear and nothing else...what a contrast...














This is in the red light quarter and the wider body of ice is more broken up.


Ok, here in the bag is some spacecakes from wonderful supermarket chain Albert Heijn - regular cookies really. There's some real space cake and a mango pulped in a bag here too, yummy. I ate about 6 mangoes in Amsterdam this weekend, they sell fresh mango sliced and diced at Albert Heijn.


I hope you can read this, it's the warning on the space cake wrap: i slept pretty good in Amsterdam, although I should save cake for later... A combo of booze, gut drugs, tranq's from flying and space cake makes for one sleepy bear... And so I slept off a good part of the first afternoon.


View from hotel window looking along the Ij, into the Ij Meer. That's a big inland lake or sea from the days when Holland was cut from the sea. The church steeples you see in pics below should be nearly submerged, we are below sea level here by quite a few feet.


Amsterdam houses are unique, and although without skates I am now on the ice too...well for some shots, not often I can say I walk on water.


I met some people from Argentina and we went for drinks, 2 guys 4 gals, they were quite nice, they had just been in London. They could not believe how cold it was, I told them they were nuts, it's hot in Argentina now...


But the day I leave here, Monday, it is to warm up. So I bring the gift of warmth to all of Europe.... i bring light and warmth wherever I go...and on odd occasion earthquakes...


It was good to see the canals like this though - many old Dutch master paintings were of the frozen canals, but you never ever see them in the last decades...


On the ice again:














Steeple below - water level should be approaching the spire:








Insane how many are out and about!


Forgotten treasure:


Lovely coffee....


There was a protest over Obama's Internet and copyright laws....





This old cafe makes me laugh...





Head gear to the extreme, now with permanently attached bong:


Kaas ! Best place for cheese, I am stocking up on way home!






And that was a weekend in sunny Amsterdam. Not cheap, always pretty, good food and the most interest I get from women anywhere. Funny how putting them behind glass windows with red lamps distorts their view...

Ok, off to Zurich now then change planes for Istanbul, where Europe meets the Middle East...


- BlogPressed from my iPad. Click on pictures for larger version and gallery. Copyright 2012 TinyFrontalLobeOnVacation Inc.