City Break Reviews » Amsterdam Reviews

Amsterdam is a small city, and, although the concentric canal system can be initially confusing, finding your bearings is straightforward. The medieval core boasts the best of the city's bustling streetlife and is home to shops, many bars and restaurants, fanning south from the nineteenth-century Centraal Station , one of Amsterdam's most resonant landmarks and a focal point for urban life. Come summer there's no livelier part of the city, as street performers compete for attention with the trams that converge dangerously from all sides. From here, Damrak storms into the heart of the city, an unenticing avenue lined with overpriced restaurants and bobbing canal boats, and flanked on the left first by the Beurs , designed at the turn of the twentieth century by the leading light of the Dutch modern movement, H.P. Berlage, and then by the enormous De Bijenkorf department store.

To the left off Damrak, the infamous red-light district , stretching across two canals - Oudezijds (abbreviated to O.Z.) Voorburgwal and O.Z. Achterburgwal - is one of the real sights of the city, thronged in high season with visitors keen to discover just how shocking it all is. Though seamy and seedy, the legalized prostitution on flagrant display here is world-renowned. The two canals, with their narrow connecting passages, are thronged with neon-lit "window brothels", and at busy times the crass on-street haggling over the price of various sex acts is drowned out by a surprisingly festive atmosphere.

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