Amsterdam

Rereading Bill Bryson's hilarious account of his travels in Europe ('Neither here nor there') I've reached his LOL picture of the Dutch language experienced while he was in Amsterdam, which reminded me of the time C and I visited the city many years ago.

The trip was definitely in the 90s: I remember market stalls stacked high with porn videos (not DVDs) rubbing shoulders with flower and cheese stalls. This, and the anatomical souvenirs in the tourist shops, firmly placed the city apart from any other we'd visited before or since.

The TV in our hotel had adult channels and you could see a free sample before having to commit to paying, so I had the dubious pleasure of viewing, for 30 seconds, a revoltingly tattooed guy apparently about to service two or three heavily made-up women sporting breasts enhanced to the point of deformity  ...until C returned from the bathroom and put a stop to the proceedings.

The buildings and canals of Amsterdam were fascinating. We visited the Anne Frank house (very evocative and saddening) and did a canal tour. The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum were amazing.

But two other, less cultured, memories stand out.

First the dog shit. As noted in Bryson's book (published in 1991) it was everywhere. And on city pavements packed with commuters, shoppers and tourists it was near impossible to avoid - which was why, mercifully, most of it was already squashed flat into the ground. You could probably measure the half-life of unsquashed doggy do in seconds. I wonder, now, if trainers ever caught on in Amsterdam, as flat treadless soles are essential unless you wish to spread the turd, as it were. Perhaps Nike funded a 'clean up Amsterdam' campaign... I hope so.

The second was an incident while we were exploring the city on the Sunday morning. The streets were quiet as we wandered between a line of historic houses and a canal, when something caught our attention, thankfully on the other side of the water: a guy walking along, flies agape and cock in hand, busily bashing the bishop.

Now I'm aware that the Pharaohs were required to fertilise the Nile in similar fashion during state ceremonies but have serious misgivings about a pimply youth performing a similar ritual into one of Amsterdam's lesser known canals, a scene spectacularly lacking in pomp and ceremony. Perhaps it is, in fact, a quaint local custom, but it wasn't in the guidebook.

Needless to say, this was the closest we got to seeing a live Dutch sex show.