Outside the window at Frankie's place.
While Frankie and Anne-Laure worked we wandered around Amsterdam. It took a bit of getting used to, walking the streets as it is not always easy to see where the bicycles and scooters are supposed to travel and where the pedestrians are supposed to walk!
There are so many varieties of bicycles everywhere. The Dutch are far more creative with their bicycles than the Chinese. They carry children on the front as well as on the back of bikes and also have various bits added at the front or back to seat everyone or to carry things. The younguns like to decorate their parcel carriers with plastic flowers. I'm sure it makes it easier to spot your bike in a park of thousands.
We visited the Van Gogh museum and were given a tip to arrive between 11 and 1 to avoid the tours so we were lucky enough to have a relaxed look at everything.
There is a lot of rebuilding of footpaths going on at present so it was quite an obstacle course to find our way.
We enjoyed drinking the delicious hot chocolate in the cafes when we needed warming up. The shops are full of decorations for Sinta Klaas. This is the Saint who comes on December 5th to the children. He has helpers who are black and they accompany him on his rounds. There are two versions of why they are black. One is that they got covered in soot from climbing down the chimney into the houses and the other was because they represent the Spanish who were enemies of the Dutch and they would take the bad children back to Spain with them. Traditionally a book was kept of good and bad children so he knew who would get a gift and who would get their shoes filled with twigs instead.
We have not heard Christmas music played in the stores like we would at this time of the year in NZ!
The leaves have blown off the trees in the streets and it all looks rather bleak now.
It was interesting to see the houses in the old part of the city with their hooks to help hoist furniture to the floors above and then put them in through the windows rather than carry them up so many narrow stairs. When you hire a furniture removal van you get a pulley and a net to help move the furniture. It sure saves a lot of stair climbing.
Some of the houses with their narrow stairs that go in all directions. I could barely fit my size 10 shoes on the step.
One day we also visited the Rijks museum with its collections of paintings from the old Dutch masters. There was also an exhibition of a human skull that Damien Hirst had covered with diamonds. The skull was from someone in the 1800s and when he told his mother what he was doing to the skull she responded in shock with "For the love of God!" Now the exhibition is titled that.
In the evening we drove by the famous Red Light District. Prostitution was legalised in 1815 while brothels weren't until 2000. The ladies sit in front of the windows to attract customers. About 5% of the ladies are Dutch and there are about 1000 to 1200 working 380 windows each day. They have to pay between 80 to 100 Euro per day for the window. The shops are closed on Mondays so this is the most popular time for the Dutch customers. Of all the international clientele, the British make up 50%.
Pimping is illegal in The Netherlands and all the ladies pay taxes and have their own unions.
In the local paers and on TV we saw reports that the government wants to reduce the number of prostitutes and to reduce the number of coffee shops that sell marijuana. We went by some of the coffee shops and they looked really sleazy. Cafes are like bars where you can have coffee but coffee shops are where you have marijuana and beer.
