From Paris to Amsterdam: Drugs, Sex and the Led Zeppelin

Indonesian Rijsttafel (Rice Table) is an indulgence of Amsterdam not to be missed. Thanks to Expatica.com's France Account Manager Stephane Caen who lives just outside the city, we discovered one of the best restaurants, Tempo Doeloe. More than 24 different dishes ranging from very mild to very hot were placed before us accompanied by two bowls of different rice, three kinds of chips and dipping sauces. Before the weekend was over, we taste tested another one, slightly less formal and less expensive, just in front of the flower market on the Singel -- Sampurna. Here at the flower market is where you buy flower bulbs to start your own garden of tulips, carved wooden tulips to take home to decorate your table and fuzzy Dutch clog-style slippers to bring to the kids.

"Coffee Shops" are even more prevalent in Amsterdam than I remember from before. You don't need to see them...you can smell them. These are the cafés where one can buy and smoke hashish and marijuana legally while drinking a beer or a coffee. Many of them now offer Internet and good pastries including "Space Cakes" (marijuana-filled muffins). Still, they are smoky, seedy and not Amsterdam's classiest spots.

The Dutch government believes by keeping soft drugs separate from other drugs it makes it possible to control and therefore stop people turning to harder drugs and hopefully away from crime and addiction. The statistics say it works...Holland has the lowest figures in Europe. There were 2.4 drug-related deaths per million inhabitants in the Netherlands in 1996 compared to France with 9.5, Germany with 20, Sweden 23.5 and in Spain 27.1. In 2005 in the U.S. (you're going to "love" this figure), 17,000 deaths were related to illicit drug use (56.6 per million inhabitants) and 0 to marijuana.

Prostitution is legal in Holland and prostitutes occupy many a window, even outside the traditional red-light district, dressed scantily, naturally. They are young and quite often, very pretty. Groups of young men stand not far away in awe as they watch until they get up the nerve to hire one for 30 minutes...or likely less. Legalized prostitution in Holland has ensured the prostitutes good access to medical care and a union for the prostitutes lobbies the government when needed.

Shopping is a total treat in Amsterdam. Prices are greatly less than in Paris and style is practical and classic. Boutiques abound, particularly in an area called the Jordaan, just on the northern western side of the city made up of diagonally crisscrossing streets bordered by the Prinsegracht on the east. The district reminds me much of Le Marais -- very old homes, once for the poor and working class, now gentrified and elegant...what I would term "bohemian chic." I was hoping to find a second-hand boutique I had been to a few times before where I always found great bargains. It was impossible to remember the Dutch street names, but we ferreted it out and spent much of the afternoon trying on clothing and buying designer dresses that would cost five to ten times more when new.

Gifts to ourselves, it was appropriate when we happened upon "Sinterklaas" slowly meandering down a street of the Jordaan followed by his "helpers" (children in costume). A kind of benevolent old man, his feast day is observed by exchanging gifts on December 5th. This Feast of Sinterklaas, or St. Nicholas, is an annual event which has been uniquely Dutch and Flemish for centuries and it so happens that he did actually exist, having died on December 6th, in the year 342 or 343. It's the true original story of what we know as Santa Claus today.

Sunday mornings, there is a huge open-air market on the Lindengracht in the Jordaan filled with stands selling fresh produce, meats and fish, cheeses, hardware, clothing, bric-a-brac and other local goodies. The Dutch cheeses are big and round and solid. Such a dairy diet seems to have contributed to the height of the Dutch, who on the average are the tallest in the world with young men averaging 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall compared with the French men who average 5 feet 9.2 inches (175.6 meters).

We skipped the usual museum visits, which we have done on previous occasions and opted instead for the most touristy thing to do -- Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Located on Dam Square, it's everything one would hope it to be. The wax replicas of our most revered people are so life-like to be eerily present. My favorites were Anne Frank, whose sad stare brought tears to my eyes, and Mona Lisa, Paris' most important woman, whose three-dimensional form brought the Di Vinci Code to life.