"Amsterdam in Winter" Amsterdam by betako3

It was my winter holiday. My friend suggested going abroad, preferably somewhere hot and inexpensive, just for a few days. So we went to our favourite travel agent in Kraków and asked him for the best deal. Somehow it turned out to be Amsterdam. Not that it was hot, but the flight was quite cheap. I'd been to Amsterdam before but it was only for a couple of hours on the way somewhere else. And it was so long ago that I only had some hazy memories of the city and a few pictures in my drawer as a souvenir. So I said, why not?

A pink triangle in a canal.

It soon turned out that Amsterdam is not the best winter destination, especially if you set out having sun in mind. Apart from the first day, when we actually saw some sun, it either rained or blew or both. On the last two days of our stay it blew so hard that some streets were closed to traffic and at times I really had to struggle to keep myself in an errect position not to mention walking. But even then I saw a die-hard biker trying to brave the wind until he was toppled from his vehicle. I don't know what happened to him because I had to take cover from the sudden blast of wind round the nearest corner. In the evening when the wind was worst we stayed at our hostel and enjoyed a free round of beer at the bar. From what I understood from the waiter, the local authorities advised this step in an effort to bribe tourists into staying in their hotels, in order to avoid casualities. I wonder who footed the bill?
Sitting cosily over our pints of beer we listened to hair-rising stories from people pouring in from the gloom and doom outside. A guy saw a tree collapsing on two cars. Somebody else was scared out of his wits when a few bricks fell out of the blue, crushing furiously into the pavement just a few meters away. And so on.
Now, I enclose the gloomiest photo I took within those few days which I spent in Amsterdam. You can hardly see anything because the flash, which had kept failing before, simply refused to work, there and then. But the caption should give you an idea of what it represents. To me, this picture renders perfectly the atmosphere of the darkest moments I experienced in that city.

The fat red cat at the bar

But not all was bleak. We actually had some very bright moments. Like the sun illuminating the fabulous Dutch architecture on the day we arrived. Like the colourful stand with exotic fruit, some of which I couldn't identify. Or the sight of a few hundred tulips in different colours in the flower market, or the fat red cat which frequented our hostel bar (I've got proof!), or a graffiti-covered '*** deflector' in one of the dark corners of the Red Light District.
Apart from things obviously colourful, I can add an extremely enjoyable guided tour of the city, a few delicious hours we spent in an insignificant-looking second-hand book shop, which turned out to be vast inside (I spent my last money there) or, last but not least, those two incredibly nice guys we met in our hostel's kitchen with whom we chatted away the whole evening.
And finally, there is that mystery of the pair of jeans lying flat on the floor of our room when we entered it for the first time. They were, I think, XXL in size and looked threatening. Throughout our stay there nobody came to collect them and nobody cleared them away, although we did inform the receptionist about the situation. Finally we left the hostel and the jeans stayed. I sometimes wonder what happened to them.

• Pros:All the things mentioned in chapter 3 plus a lot more.
• Cons:The weather in winter
• In a nutshell:Probably the greatest number of museums per square kilometre in the whole of Europe and good beer (imported from Belgium, the waiter said)