Day 2- Amsterdam continued

Today was a very full day, and I still have plans to go to the bar in my hostel later tonight.
I woke up at 7am already over the jet lag and I have been going ever since.
My hostel provides breakfast until 10:30 so I got up for that, hoping to have a real meal, after 3 days without. I was pretty disappointed to see that my choices were warm bread, not toasted, just warm. Also, hard boiled egg, banana, cereal or plain yogurt. Nothing special, but free and food. 2 good qualities. After eating I went for a walk before meeting up to go on a walking tour.
The tour was supposed to be 3 hours long, it turned out to be 4. I'm not complaining about this at all though. It was an awesome tour with an excellent guide. He took us around the famous red light district, Anne Frank's house, "coffee" shops and tons of other important buildings (churches, palace, etc..) We got lots of suggestions for things to see and lots of information on the places we did see. I've decided I should share my new found knowledge.

Ready for some exciting facts???

- prostitution is legal because even though it was tolerated before legalization, they decided it wasn't fair that women were working but got most money taken from them by pimps and traffickers. They believe in "respecting sex trade workers all over the world" There is even a statue saying so.
- On average you will be charged 50€ for 15 minutes of either oral or sex. If you want anything else, you pay more.
- Growing, buying, selling, possessing, and smoking marijuana is completely ILLEGAL. It is tolerated because they would rather see people smoking weed than getting high on meth, crack, heroin, etc..
- Amsterdam has only 10% of the hard drug use that America has.
- "Coffee" shops are only allowed to sell 500g of weed per day, can't sell to anyone under 18, can't have firearms and cannot sell or possess hard drugs. Sticking to these rules allows for continued tolerance.
-Amsterdam is the safest city in Europe outside of Sweden. The safest part of the city?? The red light district. Crazy, I know. There are cameras all over the city and a strong police presence to keep everyone safe.
-The city is not solid land, it is made up of over 80 islands and more than 1200 bridges.
- The buildings lean forward and some also lean to the left and right.
- The top front of most buildings have a large hook, when the city would flood a pully could be attached so that belongings could be lifted into the higher floors to prevent damage. The forward lean prevents windows from being smashed when lifting things.
- Beyond flooding, the city has also burned many times. When they figured out to stop building with wood and move to stone and brick, they would pack the sand and silt and then make a platform of trees to build on top of. The platforms weren't always solid enough and this causes the left and right leaning. Some buildings lean quite extremely.

Do you feel smarter now?? If not, that's fine. Do you want to come here and see half naked women in windows and smoke pot kind of illegally?? If not, you should. It's quite an experience. The naked women part. I have not taken part in the weed bit.

All in all, it's been an awesome day. I'm very much looking forward to one more day here tomorrow and then after that I'll be moving on to Frankfurt, Germany.

xoxo