Amsterdam…the city of pot brownies and sex shops.  Every frat boy’s dream vacation and a maybe unlikely stop for some 30 year old vacationers.  We didn’t really make plans for the city, so when our train arrived, we did what we were doing best in Europe…we wandered.   

The hotel had highlighted a few destinations on a city map and the one item that struck our fancy was the flower market.   It was definitely time for my monthly flower delivery at work, so I thought we could pick up some happy tulips to take to our hotel in Prague the next day and cheer up the place (living out of packing cubes and travel sized toiletries was starting to lose it’s luster…)

So we dodged the bikes (the bike lanes are wider than the car lanes here…) and the postcard stands selling very risqué packs of playing cards, and stopped to gaze at the beautiful Grand Palace…(that later we learned was actually just the local shopping mall and the Palace was one block over.)

And suddenly we were in the market…the fraud market.  

Here’s a little piece of tourist advise to anyone heading to Amsterdam because I never want you to feel the level of disappointment that we could only fix with a liter of wine.  The Amsterdam Flower Market does not sell flowers.  Not a single bloom and we went to every blasted stall floating on that canal.   We even stopped halfway up (for said liter of wine) to reassess and try again, wondering what we were missing.   The flower market sells tulip bulbs…by the gross.   You can get 100 bulbs for €6 and tulip bulbs planted in little wooden shoes.   But you cannot buy a live tulip. 

I feel duped.  

[Ed. note: maybe it wasn’t flower season?]