Flew into Amsterdam on Sunday and took the train into the countryside from the airport. Drab, flat Dutch landscape, though I did get to see some windmills. I turned around and went back into the city, checked into the Flying Pig hostel and met up with Erik, Dave, and Kenny. It’s been a whirlwind of a good time ever since. We did a canal tour, spent some quality hours in the Rijksmuseum (interesting= and the Van Gogh museum (awesome!), sampled some local dishes (frites! pastries! Feebo!), and walked a lot. It’s colder than I expected, but I bought an Ajax hat and put on three shirts, so no big deal.

The Dutch seem like a sensible people, though they have some endearing quirks. Their bicycle obsession is one: walking around feels like snorkeling, except instead of schools of fish I kept seeing flocks of girls on bicycles. Canals and houseboats. A healthy respect for desserts. Tolerance for tourists and widespread knowledge of English. The scenery is specific, too: I had always thought some Dutch landscape paintings had a simplistic-cartoonish quality, but now I know it really looks like that, with the huge flat-colored sky, short trees, crisp light.

The nightlife here is fun. Almost everyone at the Pig is American, but the hostel is two blocks from the Red Light, and there’s absolutely no shortage of bars, coffeeshops, clubs, etc. It’s mostly for tourists, of course, but less plastic in its commercialism than Vegas. Feels surreal to see prostitutes in the windows, but the old buildings, canals, and cobblestones soften the surprise somehow.