The Netherlands ... land of windmills, and, um, contrabands

CNV00004, originally uploaded by John Foong.

Angie and I were lucky to even get to Amsterdam, given that the terrorist threat on London occurred just 48 hours earlier. In fact, both of our flights (in and out of Amsterdam) were cancelled – I just sneaked onto the non-Heathrow Saturday morning flight, and we had to fly out of Rotterdam (the #2 city in the Netherlands) on Sunday night instead. This initially seemed inconvenient, but actually was kind of cool as it gave us an excuse to visit Rotterdam and The Haig on the way.

Amsterdam is pretty unique. Apart from having canals everywhere (the greatest volume of canals in any city in the world!), it has drugs galore (some drugs have been legalized there). On almost every corner you’ll find a “coffee shop” which – as you might be able to guess – sells “cake”, and of course, coffee (I mean actual coffee; this isn’t a veiled reference to something more sinister).