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According to Frommer’s guidebook, there are three types of people who travel to Amsterdam, those who smoke pot, those who are horny, and those who who appreciate art.

I am glad to say that we fell into the category of those who appreciate art, as none of us were interested in pot (though you can’t really get away from the pervasive smell in Amsterdam), and prostitutes were too expensive had the thought even crossed our minds (which it didn’t, except for the mild curiosity that there didn’t seem to be any male prostitutes)

Amsterdam as a whole is a very nice city, and if I was an artist, maybe I would choose to have a few years stint there. It’s got canals, bridges and near-nudes to paint to my heart’s content, and museums and art galleries to offer inspiration. While we were there we visited the Van Gogh museum, which was actually a lot of fun, and more conventional then the Hash Museum and Erotic Museum we visited in the red light district. We walked by the Anne Frank House, visited a flea market in the Jewish Quarter, walked through the flower market, and visited the picturesque residential area of Jordaan. Amsterdam is so small that we pretty much circled downtown Amsterdam before we even got on the canal cruise, which had commentary in four languages (out of a potential 13). Truth be told, I was nervous about going up to anybody to ask a question, because I didn’t know what language to use! You can’t really tell the difference between French, Spanish, Dutch and English people as easily as it is to tell apart Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, and I didn’t want to be an arrogant American and just automatically assume everyone speaks English (even if they probably do).

We only had one language difficulty, and that is when we went to a restaurant Ben picked out from the guidebook called “Elf”. (Elf=Eleven in Dutch) The guidebook said that visiting this restaurant is the perfect end to a day in Amsterdam, being on the 11th floor (hence its name), you can get an amazing view of the city. We followed the map to the restaurant, but were a little unsure of ourselves because the area was covered in graffiti, was right next to a huge empty construction site, and the first floor of the building looked like a run down apartment building — definitely not where I imagined a highly-rated restaurant would be. However, Bethany saw signs for Elf, so we got in the dilapidated elevator and pressed 11. We would never have even thought we were in the right place had not a couple been waiting for the elevator, and seeing our puzzled expressions asked us if we were looking for Elf. We were.

Apparently, we had come in through the back door, and had to walk through this enormous dining room and bar to get to the front. The walls were expansed by enormous screens on which was projected artsy images of heads in water blowing bubbles, which changed by the end of the night to a video of a man make different percussive sounds with his hands and mouth. It was definitely an artsy restaurant, gritty, nouveau art. After we were seated, the waiter comes up to us and says “goede avonde.” I hesitantly respond with “Good Evening,” and he immediately switches to English, to our relief. He’s a chatty guy, asks about us, and takes our drink orders… but leaves us with a menu entirely in Dutch! Jaci pulls out her menu reader, and we begin to get to work translating the menu so we actually know what we are ordering. We quickly pick out the words for prosciutto and artichoke, which look the same it Dutch and English, but others words are more difficult. Our waiter finally comes back (after maybe twenty minutes) and asks us if we are ready to order. Ben starts out tactfully, “we have a few questions about the menu, maybe you could help us out..”

“Oh! How about I get you a menu in English?” says the waiter when he finally realizes we can’t read Dutch. We have concluded that either very few tourists actually find this restaurant, or our waiter was playing with us, or just slow. The tragic part is, even when I had the menu in English, I still unwittingly managed to order testicles! Alas.