{"id":100,"date":"2006-07-08T15:01:20","date_gmt":"2006-07-08T22:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2006-07-08T15:01:20","modified_gmt":"2006-07-08T22:01:20","slug":"dazed-and-confused-in-amsterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/dazed-and-confused-in-amsterdam\/","title":{"rendered":"Dazed and confused in Amsterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m using this blog these days as a sort of dumping ground of all my thoughts on my Amsterdam stay as I am cameraless and will be for a little while more, so I hope my Flickr friends<\/a> will forgive me and start reading me instead. : )<\/p>\n

Amsterdam is a strange city of ambiguous nature. Some of it feels like eternally in transition, the american college students, tourists of every kind, who have traveled the world to admire the Dutch’s libertine lifestyle. The red light district in itself only covers a few blocks of the center of the city and each and every one of it’s street is filled with hypnotized men walking around like they had just landed on another planet and every woman behind a red neon lit window was an object of either worship or fear.<\/p>\n

Somehow i never quite managed to have a preconceived idea of the Netherlands. The images that flashed through my mind, had something of the misinformed-CNN-watching-tourist: clogs, windmills, drugs, same-sex marriage, tall blond people riding bicycles…<\/p>\n

Most of what I discovered here of course had nothing to do with any of that, except for the tall blondes riding bicycles : ) Yes bicycles rule here, with their own set of rules, and cars like pedestrians feel alien. I went for a boat ride last week which finished quite late and got a “ride” from someone on their bike which i was most grateful for. No one walks except for the tourists…feels like L.A. but with bike traffic. The city is slow and soothing with the speed and emergency of bikes everywhere…an odd mixture.<\/p>\n

There’s water here…what? I never knew that i would be relocating in the Venice of the North… canals everywhere and lovely undecorated and simple bridges..no fuss here, very little ornamentation, beautiful full colors on narrow houses that lean slightly forward. A lovely flower market with the latest tulip bulbs (look more like onions) on sale everywhere. I bought a “dutch for beginner’s book” because I just can’t stand not knowing what people are on about and living in someone’s culture without being able to speak to them. It’s a form of disrespect in my opinion… so I will make an effort and learn this very odd-sounding language to the best of my ability for the next month or so…<\/p>\n

So far I’ve been to great pancakes at “Pannenkoekenhuis Upstairs”, sushis at Kagetsu<\/a>, drinks at 11<\/a> and coffee at Lattei.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m using this blog these days as a sort of dumping ground of all my thoughts on my Amsterdam stay as I am cameraless and will be for a little while more, so I hope my Flickr friends will forgive me and start reading me instead. : ) Amsterdam is a strange city of ambiguous… Continue reading Dazed and confused in Amsterdam<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-1C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}