Amsterdam

We did promise that Richard would write about his educational experiences in Amsterdam, but unfortunately he's been so busy teaching horrible teenagers that he just hasn't had time to write a literary masterpiece for you.

Doubly unlucky for you is that we didn't really get many good pictures and we only were there for about 12 hours all up over two days. But there is an upside - we will probably be passing through Amsterdam often during our stay in Europe so we will be able to enlighten you as explore different areas each time.

So Part I:

Here is a collage of coffee shop signs we passed during the last bit of our city tour (a.k.a the point where Alice's attention span ran out), my favourite is the coffeeshop and juice bar sign:

Amsterdam's famous coffee shops

Due to the irresponsible use of Marijuana (by tourists) there will be no more coffeeshop licenses issued in Amsterdam and breaking the coffeeshop rules results in the coffeeshop being shutdown on the spot.... forever! So if you're keen on trying pot in Amsterdam legally you'd better get a hurry on because there are only about 200 of these establishments left. We did hear that Rotovegas's stuff is better though - and cheaper.

Richard's highlight of our short time in Amsterdam are the men's public urinals. Here's a rather fuzzy picture, we'll try and get a better one next time:

Men's public open air urinal in Amsterdam

There are plenty of contraptions to stop men peeing on buildings in Amsterdam. But my personal favourite is this:

Electrified pee deflector and railings

I feel quite dirty now. I knew I should have nagged Richard to write this blog.

We didn't have time to go to the red light district - but see a lot of canals a old buildings:

This bridge is the highest street in Amsterdam

Typical dutch bike parked on bridge over a canal

Last remaining wooden house in Amsterdam after the rest of the city of burnt to the ground

So that's it really we learnt a lot of interesting facts on our city tour and have a long list of museums, districts, shops and landmarks that we want to visit on our next trip.