As you may be able to tell from the title of this brief article – I was very very sleepy when I visited Amsterdam, as I was just returning from a long stay in USA. I will give you a piece of advice here:  Please, if you are going to visit a place, any place, just for half a day, don’t do it when coming from a whole different time zone that is 6-7 hours behind the time in your current place of visit.

As usual, we will just be talking about sensations and atmosphere, rather than specific landmarks or sights to visit.

So here is what happened. As I said, I was returning from a long(ish) stay at the USA’s East Coast, and since a good family friend is Dutch, I decided to stop by there, meet his family and as a side note see Amsterdam too. Well, that was the plan.

As it usually happens  to me, I cannot sleep in anything that moves, so I couldn’t sleep the whole night on the plane from Washington D.C. to Amsterdam. And as a result, I landed in Netherlands at 7 am, after a full night of no sleep. 🙂

Arthur was waiting for me at the airport, all excited to show me the city. After a large cup of coffee each, we got in his car and took off to catch the train that would take us to the center of Amsterdam. And everything was great until we got on that train. The warm train, mixed with the grumpy weather outside, with the rain. Ah, it made me so sleepy I was almost in a coma the whole day.

However, Amsterdam is an amazing, cozy, beautiful city. And whilst in might not be the largest city you have ever seen, it has everything a big city can offer: amazing culture and history that one can feel in the air, a famous around the world nightlife, international restaurants, great transportations and so on and so forth, but at the same time it stays nice and quiet and thanks to its channels doesn’t have that much traffic.

For the museum fans, there are over 70 different museums, the most famous of which are: the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum.

And of course, the coffee shops in Holland are allowed to sell small amounts of cannabis, which is probably the reason for a lot of tourists coming in!

I didn’t see any of the museums, I didn’t have any weed. But what made the biggest impression that stuck to my brain was the channel. God, it’s a lovely, beautiful view, and if you are there, and aren’t sleepy, please take a boat ride on that channel. You can see the whole city from the channel point of view and I promise it will be lovely and worth it.

Another thing I loved  were the small souvenir shops, the bakeries and weird condom-looking-like-different-animals selling shops!

What I saw from the Red light district, was a half naked woman, who yelled at me from the inside of a window, for trying to take a photo of her without paying (in my defense, I didn’t realize I have to pay her for that).

I definitely need to refresh my memory and see more of this city, when I am well rested! I will keep you posted.

Special thanks here to my friend Arthur for putting up with my sleepy self and letting me stay at his house, introducing me to his daughters and lovely wife, and driving me to the airport the next day!

-K.