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To celebrate Veronika’s birthday this year we decided to go to Amsterdam. For us it’s now sort of tradition to go to some places on her special day. Last year we were dying with heat in Paris, so though we really wanted to go to Rome, finally agreed on city break in Amsterdam.

The actual flight from London to the Netherlands’ capital is just about an hour, and the funny thing here is that because of the time difference our return flight itinerary looked like this : the planes take off from Amsterdam’s airport at 1650 and lands in London at 1655. That is really faaaaast! :)

So here we are. Amsterdam is a quite small and relaxed, comparing to London, city. Virtually everyone (well, apart from the army of tourists) speaks English, which made our life simpler, as well as most of the signs were either in English or had translation. The air is also much cleaner, thanks to much less heavy traffic, rare buses, operating trams and bicycles… bicycles… bicycles… :) Well, to be fair people seem to be smoking more then in Britain, and not necessary tobacco, since you can have a joint in almost any coffee-shop or if you want, go to the flower market and buy cannabis seeds to grow it yourself. You can even buy a ’starter kit’, hehe.

Like many European capitals, it is situated on the river’s banks and has enormous number of canals. So traveling by boat is quite usual. But the most popular way of moving around the town is bicycle. There are thousands of them there. And the thing is it seems like bicyclists have more rights then pedestrians, they are just everywhere. You also need to be extra attentive when crossing the road: you not only watch for cars and trams, but there are also ,surprise surprise, bicycle lanes where if you are not careful enough you will be hit by one of the owners of that quiet and earth friendly transport.

As usual, we did a lot of walking around the city, paying visits to museums and other notorious sights. The Van Gogh Museum and Rembrant’s house Museum were highly enjoyable, the Museum of sex was rather a collection of adult materials than a real museum, the Museum of Amsterdam was so huge (for a city’s museum) that we ended up too tired to see all its exhibitions. Speaking of notorious places, we caught a glimpse of the night life: went to a night club and also had a walk through the Red Light district. A very crowded place, I must say:) If you ask me, we were just window shopping, literally window shopping, since all the “goods” were on display :)

The good thing was that the hotel we were staying in was in the very city center. It was an old family-run hotel, far from luxurious, but it was close to absolutely everything. So if you go to Amsterdam, take my advice - book the room in the center ;) You will save much time and energy.

So Veronika was enjoying city’s architecture, but I was ‘working hard’ in the filed of photography, but to my biggest disappointment I had not taken my tripod with me, which meant no decent night photography and also blurry HDR :( But then I am not sure if I would want to carry an extra weight with me, so it’s always a dilemma for me. Anyway, the best shots are in the gallery.