(Hot) Amsterdam

The next day I went to Amsterdam, the Netherland's biggest metropolis. But first, we needed to go to the airport to fetch my host family's Dad from a business trip abroad. I got an opportunity again to have a look at Amsterdam's huge airport.


Amsterdam's airport is one of the biggest airport that I have actually used. It's not as straightforwars in structure as Osaka's Kansai or Detroit's airport but seeing the number of people as well as the flights landing and taking off wil give you an impression that the airport is a major transiting point in Europe.



And finally, we were able to meet the person we were waiting for. We haven't actually seen each other since I was 4 yrs old.
Geez, guess I could still gain some height!

With that, I took the train and started my adventure towards Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is a city built around canals. The canals create such an idyllic atmosphere.




Walking by around, I was able to see a big town square whose name I do not know.


Walking further around town, I was able to notice the city's 'bizzareness' and well-known tolerant attitude.


And then we have the infamous windows. 'It' is actually legal in Amsterdam. When I ask my Dutch hosts about the red light district, they always tell me that I should look into the windows which I could not understand. Well, in my curiosity, I took a picture of an actual prostitution window itself.

When a window is closed, its either 'engaged' or close for the moment. When it's open, it actually looks like this:

Sorry I could not take a picture close range as I could end up in the canals of the city afterwards.

Since I do not actually have any business in the city's red-light district, I opted to go to an exhibit of world press photographers.


They have interesting exhibits such as these:


And here is the 1st placer of the exhibit:


I also realized that Chinatowns might be a common fixture of a Dutch city. Being a port city, traders from China must have settled here long time ago.


In the evening, we watch a popular Dutch-American restaurant-theatre show called Boom Chicago. It was like in North America again as all the servers are Anglophones. There was no hint that you are in the Netherlands.













A day later, I was back in the monotonous, snobbish, and segregationist world of International Geneva.