red light district

Within the first 30 minutes of being around the Red Light District in Amsterdam, we were offered drugs at least 11 times. No joke. Creepy old black men, and one white man who was yelling "I'm white! Come to me to buy!", would walk past you, or just stand there, offering ecstasy, heroin, crack, etc. So that is great. The district itself is dodgy. Every other building is a "Happy Cafe," where you can smoke to your heart's content. My heart has no desire to smoke, nor do my lungs, so Amsterdam in that sense is boring. Interspersed among the "Cannabis Cafes," and "Stoned World Cafes" are "Natural Goods" stores, selling Marijuana seeds and Magic mushrooms, and Sex stores, with lots of dildos and condoms, as well as penis enlargers. Basically, a very kid friendly place. Surrounding the whole place, hanging like a pall over the crowded, tight cobbled alley-like streets, is the sickly smell of weed. Even at 10 in the morning. Lovely city. Oh, did I mention the overflowing trash bins, with McDonalds boxes littering the ground, wet newspapers ground to slush under many feet on the sidewalk, and condoms laying about haphazardly. The souvenir shops have ceramic penises and obscene postcards next to wooden shoes. In windows, almost-naked women dance and gyrate their hips, while men ask furtively "how much" when they open them. How much for what? you may ask. Heck if I know... ;) So Jeff, if you're reading this, you do not get to go to Amsterdam when you're in Europe. Claire, you don't get to either.
Our hostel is shady too. It is in a boat. No joke, we are literally in the belly of a ship. The whole thing is open, and there are tons of bunk beds just crammed into the hull. Or whatever, I'm not down with the ship lingo. It's an old boat, pretty big, and it's nice to be rocked to sleep. However, they ran out of fresh water this morning, so I couldn't take a shower, and I had to brush my teeth with bottled water. Oh, being a college student... The water came on about 3, though, which was nice, because i was starting to feel gross. Speaking of being dirty, our clothes, sleepsack, and towels were starting to develop a nice mold (ha ha not really, but they were still really gross), so we decided to wash them. Found a nice laundromat in the Red Light District, and by nice I mean we found one. We wandered around forever trying to find a stupid laundromat. Finally did, and sat in that place forEVER. Oh well, our stuff is (relatively) clean. Anyway, I should go, because I only have a few minutes left on this thing. Internet cafes are amazing, although it sucks when some European is smoking next to you. NEVER SMOKE, people. It is terrible. Blech.
Ciao