Smaller than I expected - could accidentally walk across the city if you get lose without realizing it. It had a very different feel than any city I'm familiar with (all of which are American), with cafes everywhere, people frequently sitting out on corners eating both in restaurant seating and just out with friends in front of their houses. The residential districts within the city center were also very odd for "city housing." They were legitimate houses instead of large apartment buildings. Oddly shaped houses perhaps, very narrow but tall and deep, which is understandable when you consider the desire of everyone to get waterfront property.
The people were by and large friendly when spoken to. They wouldn't necessarily offer advice, but if asked they seemed happy to provide it. Specifically the bartender in Cafe Chris - a small establishment about a block from the hotel that's been in operation since 1625 - answered a number of questions and pointed us toward a windmill that didn't require bike rentals and a full day to see.
There were several interesting things about our hotel vs American hotels. The room was somewhat lacking in amenities compared to a typical American hotel - no TV, no phone, fewer electrical outlets, etc. There was no climate control ability, while air conditioning was not needed in Amsterdam (at least at this time of year), there was not even a fan. A heater was in the room but with no visible means to turn it on (it is presumably centrally controlled). There were two hard beds, with only one pillow each, and the beds were pushed very close to one another. The bathroom was very lacking - there was a small shower with no curtain, there were no small or paper towels to dry your hands after washing them, in the sink (only one large bath towel per person). However, none of this particularly mattered. I was not in the room often, when I was I was tired enough the bed was more than adequate, and the only electrical outlet I needed was one to charge my cellphone. While I needed to unplug the small light by the bed to do this in a convenient location, it wasn't much of an issue due to the very long days and ambient window light from rooms across the small courtyard providing just enough light to get back to bed even with the lights off.
The only thing missing compared to a standard American hotel that I actually missed was the ice machine. Water was always served in very small glasses and was usually luke-warm. Even "cold drinks" that you could buy on the street were at best what I would describe as cool. It seemed to be largely a cultural difference as water serves a different role in Dutch meals and culture in general. It fills in until your drink gets there rather than being your drink, so those of us who drank tap water when eating out found ourselves constantly asking for refills.
The food was overall good, though somewhat different, and what I liked most surprised me. The last night I went to a vegetarian restaurant with several other students, ordered the soup of the day - a pumpkin-coconut soup with onions in it. It was outstanding. I am usually not a fan of either soup of vegetarian food, so this was quite surprising. It was also reasonably cheap at 4.25 euros before tip.
The night before I ate with a different group at a small restaurant called "the corner" or something along those lines. I had a burger, which was similar to the American counterpart. It came with fries - which looked the same but were crispier, the outsides harder. They were, I thought, slightly better than many American fries when they were still hot, but by the time they had cooled down even a bit, they became notably worse. There was also a "salad" on the plate, which consisted of a large slice of cucumber, and a lot of rather limp lettuce. The first night I ate with the entire group at the comedy club Boom Chicago, which was a disappointing meal on several levels. It started out with a smoked salmon salad, which was good, though it could have perhaps used a bit more dressing, and a bit more in the way of lettuce and other plants to eat with the fish. The second course was a chicken wing covered in a sauce that few people seemed to enjoy. It was best described I think as a mixture of mayonnaise and egg yolk. Once it was pushed off the meat was alright, though reasonably bland as it was now missing any sauce. There was a small pile of mediocre mixed vegetables on this plate as well. The last course was cheesecake, which was good, and a buff of some kind of whipped cream, which had, as far as I could tell, no taste whatsoever. The most annoying thing, however, was the initial drink that's included with the meal. They had very good beer on tap, which is a given at any Dutch establishment with beer on tap, and a glass cost less than the cocktails we had pre-ordered. However, they would not let anyone swap out beer for this cocktail, which was required to be a Cosmopolitan or a Margarita. I am very much not a fan of either of these drinks, and it was somewhat annoying to be told there was no way to switch it out for something I would like, especially when something like 10 people in a row asked to do the same thing. The comedy show started after we finished eating dinner, which was somewhat annoying as everyone was severely sleep deprived. Once it got going it was very entertaining, and did wake everyone (or at least me and the people around me) up. The table next to us was very loud, very drunk, and very smoky, but we did at least get some added enjoyment from hearing the performers mock them repeatedly. Overall Boom Chicago was entertaining, though some things could easily have been improved substantially.
My lunches were different. The first day I just subsided with what I'd gotten on the plane for breakfast and two beers at Cafe Chris - the aforementioned bar from 1625 until the Boom Chicago meal. The second day we stopped in a legitimate Dutch Pancake house, which had very dense pancakes with various toppings - from ham and bacon to chocolate. I got the chocolate, which came with a very large pancake - probably a foot in diameter, covered with a thick dark chocolate and topped with a substantial layer of powdered sugar. While the food was excellent, there was a huge amount. There was of course no way to take it with us as we were still walking around for the rest of the day and there was no good way to keep leftovers at the hotel regardless. The last full day my lunch consisted of a street vendor hot dog. It was good, overall similar to an American hot dog with the exception that the very end still had a bit of whatever is used to pack the meat twisted off past where the meat itself ended.
Breakfast every day we were in the hotel was basic but good. It consisted of bread - untoasted and room temperature served with your choice of butter, chocolate sprinkles, sugar, and jam. There were also hard boiled eggs, coffee/tea/water, and a slice of ham and swiss cheese. The plate of bread contained two stacks of different types - one was a dark, multi-grain bread, the other a plain white (which was still good, much better than something like wonder bread in America), there were also small, round toasted pieces of bread (which were cold by the time they were served), which were surprisingly good. The sprinkles were the most surprising part, they had an actual notable flavor of sweet chocolate rather than just a kind of waxy texture found in all the sprinkles I've had in America.
In terms of sights and general touristy activities that I saw, the most memorable was the Red Light district, just as something so different from anything I've seen (and as far as I know as exists) in America. As prostitution is of course entirely legal in this area, it was very obvious and in your face. The women - and the men pretending to be women - are more or less on display in windows wearing lingerie, each of the windows has a red light in or around it (hence "red light district"), patrons knock on the door, and if they decide to partake of said services, go inside and a curtain is closed. There were also sex shops everywhere, very latent about what they were selling, with large display windows like you'd find in any random other store in America. The district spans several blocks. I went through twice with groups, the first time on Sunday afternoon with one woman from the tour and one other guy (Katherine and Rob), it was active, women were offering their services, but the area was not particularly crowded. The most surprising thing to see was that there are families with children who live in the area, and there were some children on the street - mostly with parents but still there among the prostitutes and multitudes of sex shops. One house we passed, which was flanked on either side by red-light adorned windows, had a mother and her young son - I would guess around 5 years old, out planing flowers in a small flower box on their porch. Going back at night with a group which was composed of five women who wanted to see the district along with me and one other guy (Wes) was a notably different experience. Many more of the windows were open, the streets were much more crowded, the smell of marijuana and tobacco hung in the air throughout most of the area. The girls with us were, with fairly good reason, nervous the whole time, and had me and Wes take up positions at the front and rear of the group. Keeping an eye on them prevented me from looking around as much as I otherwise would have, but aside from the area overall seemed to be much more crowded but basically the same. The streets being packed, almost entirely with men who largely appeared to be in their late 20s and (sometimes well) beyond made the district seem considerably sketchier than the daytime when the streets had a lot of open space.
Other things that I did while in Amsterdam included going to Cafe Chris twice, which was interesting both because it was my first experience drinking at a bar, and because of the age of hte place. You can tell that it's old as soon as you walk in from things like the low ceiling and general decor. The bartender told us that almost nothing was actually original from the 1625 building, but she thought the ceiling might be. All of it was nonetheless very old though. I also saw the Rijksmuseum, which while much of it was closed down for renovation still contained some of the best known artwork in the world. It had a number of Rembrandts, including The Night Watch, which was a huge, huge painting of the militia guard which was done very differently from most of the yearly portraits of this nature as it showed them in a reasonably in-action pose (people giving orders, talking amongst themselves, etc) as opposed to just standing in a pose. I was overall somewhat disappointed with his artwork, it was somewhat stylized and while it looked great from a distance, up close it was extremely lacking in detail (beards were more solid masses than sets of hairs, etc). The traditional portrait on the other end of the room that the painting was on display in had amazing attention to detail, and while it was less interesting from the point of view of what was actually happening in the picture, I thought that the actual depiction was far superior. This could just be me not fully appreciating the effort or techniques that went into these methods of depiction, but I tend to prefer pictures that are as realistic looking as possible over those that are not, for whatever reason. Basically, if you're trying to show something, do your best to actually show it, your ideal should be nearly photographic. I'm sure many artists would disagree with this sentiment, but nonetheless, it's there.
After the Rijkes (SP), we went the the Van Gogh House, which contained a number of his paintings as well as his contemporaries and such. I had many of the same issues with his work that I did with that of Rembrandt, namely that it was overly stylized and while you could usually tell what the subject was and was doing (at least after reading the blurb by the side), it was very bare, odd use of color which made it in many cases not entirely obvious what specifically was being depicted. In several cases you could see that there was, for example, fruit, but telling what kind it was was something more or less your best guess or the plaque beside the painting.
I tried to go see the Hienekin Experience - a tour of the original brewery for that beer followed by a sample at the end, but it was closed for renovation. I did however make it over to the House of Bols - a mini-museum run by the company responsible for the Bols brands of liquor, it was reasonably interesting, providing a brief history of the history of mixed drinks, and Jenever, the Dutch drink that the Englished used to develop Gin. The tour went through various sense, letting you smell the different flavors of liquor they produce, see a lot of the tools and ingredients, see footage from the old manufacturing plant, etc. It ends with a free cocktail selected from a computer system that categorizes and describes each of tho available drinks. It was very good, a mixture of cranberry juice, lime juice and a substantial helping of liquor (Catherine should still have the ticket containing the recipe).
The last museum I visited in Amsterdam was the Anne Frank House. It was a very somber experience but also an extremely intersting one. It was a tour of the actual house that the Franks and their companions stayed in during their time in hiding and a small surrounding area. It was dark, small and would be extremely cramped for the 9 people who stayed there, especially considering none of them could really leave. Definitely worth checking out if you're ever in Amsterdam, but not necessarily somewhere I'd want to go back to. A note to those who may go - the line was somewhat long, it wrapped around the corner, but it moves very fast. The inside was rather crowded though, so going during off-hours would be good if possible.
On a rahter different note, the beer in Amsterdam was outstanding, as one would expect from the home of Hienekin. Hienekin was somewhat different there, it has just a bit more of a bite to the end of it, perhaps a little more bitter than what is available in the States. This is presumably due to the fact that the version found in the US has been sitting in bottles for some time whereas the Dutch version is extremely fresh. The other beers that I tried while there were Amstel, which I have not tried in the US, but I liked the Dutch version better than Hienekin. They are both native beers and share the same owner. The other that I tried on tap was a Belgian white (whisse ) beer, it was very different but good. It has no bitterness at a very smooth, almost slightly sweet flavor to it. Worth trying. I also had a sip of Hoegaarden from the end of a bottle that Wes had. It was interesting insofar as it parentally is made with live yeast still in the beer, something very rare. It was good, but I did not have enough to provide a good description.
The final thing I'm going to talk about is the train ride to Paris, during which I wrote all of the above. The train is nice, but overall not all that much better than the commuter trains going into NYC. The seats are a bit more padded and separate, the overhead luggage racks are a bit nicer looking (glass instead of metal bars), but no more functional. We are in a large car with other random people and have assigned seating (each ticket has a seat associated with it, but there is no name associated with a ticket, so we could still sit with the people that we want to. It is an approx. 4 hour train ride which stops in several places, most notably Brussels. Announcements of stops, etc. are done in (from what I can tell) French (native language of destination), Dutch (native language of origin), English, and at time other languages (probably the native language of whatever region we're currently in). It has wireless internet available, but I could not connect (the DHCP server, while extant, was not assigning IPs to anyone). Most people who have the mobis used the beginning of the trip to answer questions and I got to try to get their keyboards working, I couldn't get anything to work, but Dr Turkett did by installing the driver for the keyboard one-by-one on each mobi that someone wanted to use a keyboard with (funny thing about drivers, they do tend to help).
And now my battery is dying, so I'll say that was Amsterdam and leave it at the above wall of text.
Added notably later:
Bikes in Amsterdam were annoying. They have the right of way over everyone, including pedestrians, and know it. You'll be walking down the street, hear a little bike bell ringing behind you and have to get out of the way real fast. The streets were much narrower than American cities, presumably due to the streets being built before cars were widespread (they still aren't terribly, though weather this is a result of the streets or the streets are a result of this is unknown). There was no actual metro but there were above ground electric trams that worked pretty well.
I went to see cirque de soleil, which was interesting but not as impressive as most other people seemed to think. The acrobatics were very impressive, but most of the costumes just seemed excessive to me. I probably wouldn't go again, but it's worth seeing once I suppose.
