Amsterdam: Things to do include Anything.

Covering up the typo sign that reads Hamsterdam.

If you talk to people who have visited Amsterdam, they'll all tell you the same thing: AMSTERDAM WAS THE BEST I LOVED IT YOU SHOULD GO THERE! I DON'T REALLY REMEMBER WHY OR ANYTHING THAT I DID BUT IT WAS THE BESSSSTTTT. 

And that is the secret of Amsterdam: it's got the reputation as the Vice City capital of Europe for a reason, and your options are limitless! Everything is legal! Except violence/murder/other-things-that-are-not-legal, so don't get it confused with GTA: Vice City, and stay cool. Remember, the locals have to deal with at least one spacecaked-shroomed-out-drunk tourist screaming and running naked through the red light district every day, so don't be that guy.

Anyway, within the parameters of anything, you can probably find something to like in Amsterdam.

Like Art? Do yourself a favor and go see the Van Gogh museum. You'll see lots of pretty colors, and looking at his take on scale and perspective, you may even feel better about yourself as an artist!

Like History? See the highly minimalist Anne Frank House! It's guaranteed to cheer you up about as much as a concentration camp!

Like old buildings? Walk around! 

Pro tip: watch out for bikes. They don't break for tourists.

You , too, can go Tourist watching!

Like really skinny buildings? Well, someone does.

One of the many thinnest buildings in Europe. Rationale? Tax loophole.

Like making fun of monuments that are compensating for something?

Meeting place for the walking tour.

Speaking of compensating, you can visit a condomerie, and buy your friends a bewildering array of bad-idea protection!

Insert joke here.

Like cheese? Go to the Cheese museum, or better yet, just eat a lot of free samples upstairs and skip the museum!

This museum isn't cutting it.

Like pimped out rides? This one shouldn't be hard to find.

You wish your car had rims like that.

Like sitting around and relaxing? Amsterdam has many very chill parks. Sitting and taking in the nature on nice sunny days comes highly recommended. 

I hear ducks can be really interesting.

Like boats? Take a canal tour.

Canals: less confusing to navigate around than Venice.

Like Red Light Districts? You can walk around and see the ladies displaying their wares in windows, but while it is legal and regulated except for problematic problematic human trafficking problematic.

He Biltmore, and more, and more...

Technically, only 1% were protesting...

Flashback to last week: I failed to update anything because I was on vacation, exploring North and South Carolina. In the North we saw a monument to the One Percent of old. In the South, the streets were overrun with protesters.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate that only members of the 99% are reading this blog. If you are in the top 1% and you're reading my blog for fun, you should probably consider becoming a patron of the arts. Artists with grants turn out work much faster.

But even if you are in the top 1%, you've got nothing on the old Robber barons. Namely Vanderbilt. This, The Biltmore, was his house:

Notice that the ants are actually people.

So we toured the Biltmore (located near Asheville, aka Beertown USA 2-3 years in a row). This tour was no small thing. In fact, the house is the largest private residence in the US. It's big. At 2,000,000 square feet, containing roughly 500 rooms, of which 43 are bathrooms (only one was visible on the tour). The banquet hall really should count as a multiple rooms, because it's seven stories high and could swallow certain presidential homes with room to spare.

Conservatory

This is the .00001%. Didn't see any protesters, though. But the house is so fancy that its influence spreads out into the places it touches in town. Even the neighboring McDonald's has vaulted ceilings and a grand piano. It was rumored to be Vanderbilt's favorite eating establishment. All in all it was enjoyable, and an insane display of wealth from another age. My biggest regret is that I didn't approach visiting the house with plans for a day of live-action clue.

They didn't have a waterfall, so they built one.

But further into the city, Asheville became more fun with its own unique flavor. It was full of hippies, headshops, beer, chocolate, and art galleries. The art galleries were fun, cocolate cookies delicious, and the Expresso Stout even lived up to the storeperson's claims of being "only the best thing ever." In one of the art places, I came very close to buying a tiny tophat, but I realized I need to make sure my fashion choices do not significantly overlap with Helena Bonham Carter.



Now back in the cold winter of Virginia, and frozen hands. Hobo gloves are going to be a fashion staple this month for NaNoWriMo.

But their boat house was pretty much just a waterfront gazebo.
Poor Vanderbilt, didn't even have the money to put in windows!