TOP TEN THINGS THEY DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT AMSTERDAM

LIZ PRESENTS:

TOP TEN THINGS THEY DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT AMSTERDAM

1.Beautiful canal views come with big, noisy canal boats. Actually boats seem pretty noisy in general. I guess it's because they are pretty much floating parties, so each comes with it's own music, or not, and it's own group of revelers. What's really funny is watching the people on the tour boats from any perspective while they take pictures of you and the megaphone voice talks about the real Amsterdam. 2.It's not just the prostitutes, it's all in the windows. Amsterdamers seem to be good at window displays, especially when they are the item being displayed. From the well known red light district to the street level windows of actual houses, the windows are decorated with people. Like the girl who looked like she was doing a great imitation of our old goldfish, Chub when Eric told me we were in the Red Light District. Uh, oh, I get it, duh. But then, there are also actual homes that are ground level, on an extremely narrow sidewalk. So, when you walk by you can't help but look right in their window, which is very disorienting for an American, who is used to five times as much space and curtains to separate the people at home from walkers by. Living in Paris, where almost all ground floors are shops, I'm very used to looking if there is a window. But, hey, it's not like the Amsterdamers don't know you can see. So, they put interesting, often fun, things in the window, like the line of wedding cake couples in a window across the street from the Anne Franke House. There is always a line at the Anne Franke house, I imagine most of them are couples and families.