Amsterdam is Paris, but smaller . Venice, but with less tourists. Sitting at any one of the numerous cafes along the treelined canals with a tiny glass(25cl)of La Chouffe or De Koninck beer is heavenly. How we make it home to our hotel without getting stoned simply from the scent of marijuana that flows from establishments called "coffee houses" is a mystery. Hookers in storefront windows, marijuana in restaurants. What a remakable city. If only they knew baseball.



Later that night:

Our Internet booked hotel is near the train station, adjacent the Red Light district. An enormous streelight hangs right outside our third floor window. Across the street is the Happy Sex Shop where a dildo that was surely fashioned from a posing donkey sits in the front window. Midnight has long since passed. Just like in medieval times, I want to pour cauldrons of boiling oil out the window at that which invades us. But the invaders are sound systems in bars. One below us, one across the street. The music is electronica insterspersed every few minutes or so with Freddie Mercury singing "We are the Champions" and then revellers breaking into Auld Lang Syne - in Dutch. It's all to do with a Euro-Cup soccer game that Holland won over Italy.



I read in one of our guide books that Amsterdam - probably because all of its pot smoking - is normally a quiet city that closes early. But not now. It's all beer, beer and more beer. Soccer has done this to us and we'll never forgive the game. Tonight other matches will be played and it will happen all over again. I expect that in the entire continent there will be no escaping the blight.



Tomorrow night, maybe I'll be able to convince Ellen to go to a live late-night sex show. I've heard tales of dutch donkeys; that might take our minds off bloody soccer.