Unbelievable. It's 9:30am. I just woke earlier and it was 6. What happened? We slept for 15 hours. I know we were tired from the flight but that's crazy. We have plans. That's ok. Mom? We got to hurry up. We're going to the Christmas park, the canal ride, the night canal ride and shopping. We're getting a late start but we'll be ok if we roll.

First there's breakfast to make, then makeup time plus whatever. We don't leave the house until 12:30pm. It gets totally dark here at 4pm so we don't have much time. We hurry (not really) down toward the train station to catch the 21 to Westerpark for the Christmas bazaar. I'm not really sure what it is but it's worth checking out. It's only on Sundays. Mom somehow sees some sign somewhere and scans her card to get off so I have to as well. Now we're somewhere in Westerpark district but no park or Christmas fair. We ask several people but end up going in circles. Bottom line, after 2 painful miles of walking, we caught the 21 back to Centraal station. Time: 3:30pm. Just about in time for our night cruise through the canals.

There goes my plan fpr the Amsterdam Christmas Market. We go to the canal boat and get aboard where its nice and warn. Temp here has been 38F day and lower at night. Mostly cloudy, even a bit foggy. No rain. So we checked out the Amsterdam Festival of Lights from the comfort of a canal boat. Mom liked that because she loves boats. It's about an hour. After that, we walked around some, stopping for a slice of pizza. Just people watching is fun here. It's mostly a younger crowd here in the old district, checking out the girls in the windows and the coffee shops.

Prostitution is actually legal in many parts of Europe, but nowhere in the world is prostitution a major tourist attraction like it is here. It’s hard to avoid, actually, being so close to the train station and in the city’s oldest and most historic neighborhood. Here, working girls rent small rooms with enormous windows along the canals and side streets to flirt with passers-by under the glow of what are literally red lights. Their quick and unromantic services reportedly start in the €50 range and go up from there. At our apartment, you can hear activity outside until 4 in the morning. The coffeeshop (almost always written as one word) in Amsterdam is the other big attraction for visitors to the Red Light District. There were many here. They appear like coffee shops from the outside. You can stroll into a "coffeeshop" in Amsterdam and legally buy a small quantity of marijuana or hash, along with your coffee or juice, and smoke it right there in the shop or at the tables out front. The quality is high and the prices are low, relatively speaking. You can buy pre-rolled joints if you like, or roll your own with the free rolling papers provided. You can bring in a portable pipe or borrow one of the bongs from the coffeeshop itself. Many shops also sell spacecakes which are variations of pot brownies that most people are familiar with. I think people from around Europe come here just for that. We never saw any issues with people smoking. Maybe the US could learn something here.

Anyway, we headed back early by 9pm. Heck, the night's barely started at that time.  It's Sunday night and a bit more quiet than last night   I started on the blog, showered and we watched a little news. I told you, "Geezers in Amsterdam". There should be a TV show.

Al