**WARNING** This post contains details that may not be suitable for all readers. Your opinion of me might be changed if you continue to read!
We’re nearly to the end of our time in Amsterdam and already we’re both feeling so rested and we’re loving this vacation thing.
Yesterday we slept in and it felt great. We left the hotel just after Noon and stopped at the bakery for ham and cheese pastries and a little walnut cake that was really good. We headed into the centre of town in search of the place to buy discount tickets for the things we wanted to do. When we finally reached Central Station we stopped first to buy Starbucks and ten Euros later, we were outside and lost. It took us a little while but finally got onto what we thought was the correct street. A stop in at McDonald’s for some cheap lunch and we finally found the ticket shop and we got all of our entertainment sorted for the next two days.
Right next door was the Sexmuseum and oh what a place. The galleries are filled with all sorts of displays showing things you wouldn’t believe. Pornographic photos from the early 1900’s, statues, paintings, cartoons…all showing the world’s fixation on sex. At first is was all very, very giggle worthy and a little embarrassing. But by the time we were about half way through the museum, it started to get actually rather interesting. There were displays from various cultures including Ancient Greek, African and Asian and all of them had surprisingly similar themes; fertility featuring heavily in all of them. We took some rather hilarious photos and had a good laugh at everything.
We quickly made our way across the street just in time to hop onto our canal cruise. It was an hour long and was so much fun. With recorded commentary, we learned how the city grew up around the canals and how they were used by all levels of society. The closer you lived to the innermost canal, and therefore the centre of the city, the wealthier you were. The owners of the Dutch East India trading company would’ve lived and worked right in the centre of town along with many, many other incredibly rich merchants. At one point they could be expected to make the equivalent to 700,000 Euros per month.
The best part of the views on the canals are the facades of the houses themselves. They’re all tall, most of them are really skinny, and some of them angle out a bit at the top. That’s because everyone was quietly trying to outdo each other and from the street, a house that tips out a bit looks bigger. Some of them are tilting to one side or the other, something caused by rotting timber foundations under the canal waters. The locals call one specific group of these homes the dancing houses. It was also neat to see the hoist beams at the top of each of the houses along the canals. Because the stairwells are so narrow and steep, furniture for homes and large, heavy items that were stored in warehouses would have to be lifted to upper levels of buildings by rope and pulley. They still use them today which I think is pretty cool and very efficient.
We got off the cruise and made our first trek into the red light district. We very quickly were walking past ladies in their windows as they tapped on the glass and beckoned to men who showed any interest. They were, as you would expect in various states of undress, most of them in bras and panties or skimpy little bikinis. There really is something for everyone in terms of taste; every size, nationality, hair colour…we saw it all and it was only about 4pm. I had a really hard time at first, not knowing where to look and not wanting the girls to see that I was looking at them. But it shortly became sort of normal to peek into the windows as you came across them. As Brandon put it, they’re for sale. You can’t think of it as odd or awkward because they are the product and they are okay with that so it’s okay for the passerby to think that. Very odd.
We headed back to our hotel to change and get ready for dinner and the evening’s entertainment. We were lucky enough to get into a Japanese restaurant for their all you can eat dinner. It was pricey but totally worth it for the feast of sushi, noodles, dumplings, and all sorts of other things we ate. From there though we walked back into the red light district to Cassa Rosso for our show.
A live sex show. Now I know this sounds really strange and a little gross to some. But this is a city that has been known to be open minded for centuries. And these shows have become a regular and very popular occurrence in Amsterdam for men and women alike. They start at 7pm and run till 1am with acts changing out every fifteen minutes or so. When we walked in a woman was just finishing up her act, smoking a cigar from someplace other than her mouth. Second came a couple who engaged in some very choreographed sex with some crazy positions. There was a dominatrix who pulled a “volunteer” from the audience, a striptease, two women, a pole dancer who was amazing, another very acrobatic couple, and two audience participation acts in which people from a Contiki tour group were pulled up on stage and given all sorts of lovely tasks to perform. But as shocking as it all sounds, and as real as I know it all was, it all seemed really fake. None of the performers really looked like they were having any fun and one act in particular was really rough and was kind of disturbing. Once you’re in you can stay as long as you like but we left after a little more than an hour. I think it was worth the really expensive ticket, but I wouldn’t have to do it again.
We made our way back to the hotel after that, mostly because the trams stop running at 11:30 and a taxi back to the hotel would cost a fortune. But it was a very eye opening and interesting night!
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