KEY POINTS:
Amsterdam is a city that takes pride in its eccentricity. In the old part of the city buildings lean against each other at crazy angles; there are more bicycles than there are people and they are constantly being recycled through theft.
While the rest of the world is
banning smoking, Amsterdammers defiantly suck cannabis in their coffee shops; porn is everywhere and prostitutes work openly (but try to photograph them and you risk having your camera tossed in a canal).
And, on top of all that, it is an incredibly friendly city, a joy to walk around, where there always seems to be something going on - music drifting round a corner, bright lights twinkling at the end of a dark alley, an interesting smell wafting on the breeze, signalling yet another party.
Amsterdam was also, for us, the perfect place to finish a luxury cruise down the River Rhine on board the Avalon Tapestry.
We could have gone for a bus trip to see those Dutch trademarks - cheese, tulips and windmills - but instead a few of us decided to follow an itinerary drawn up by the children of some fellow passengers to take in some of Amsterdam's less-known sights.
But first we needed to be educated in the local road code. Rule number one, a vivacious blond university student explains, is, "Watch out for cyclists." Rule number two is the same.
Cyclists dominate Amsterdam the same way cars dominate Auckland. "There are 785,000 people in Amsterdam," our adviser says, "and one million-plus cycles."
It looks like it. Parked cycles line the streets and canals, block footpaths, clutter the outsides of buildings and overflow from the official cycle parking areas, cycle parking buildings and even, on the waterfront, a cycle parking barge.
I'm a little surprised to note that most are held in place with huge, thick chains. "That's because bicycles are stolen all the time," we learn. "Even with a big chain it is no surprise to arrive back and find your bike gone.
"You just go to one of the secondhand fairs and buy a new one for not very much. Sometimes you might see your own bicycle but it is no use complaining because the person selling it always got it from someone else. You just have to accept it as part of the price of having a bicycle."
Cyclists, we discover, don't wear helmets, rarely have lights, often have no bell and give way to neither pedestrian nor car. "The best advice I can give you," our adviser says by way of farewell, "is look both ways before you cross anywhere and don't expect them to stop because they won't."
Duly warned we head off, looking nervously to left and right, though the reality turns out to be not quite as bad as the warning.
Walking through into the heart of the city, the first thing to strike our naive antipodean eyes is the sign for the Sex Museum. Goodness. A bit further on there is a Porno Supermarket whose billboard is advertising a special "demonstration video". And that's just the beginning.
We decide to forgo a visit to the famous red light district where the goods on offer are tastefully displayed in shop windows lit, of course, by red lights. Instead, following our special itinerary, we stroll through what is described as a mini red light district where the working girls ply their trade on the bank of a canal. A bit like K Rd, really, except for the canal.
Canals are, of course, one of the things that make Amsterdam such a charming city but I must admit I didn't realise how many of them there are. The commentary on the little canal cruise we took explained that there are 165 canals, 1281 bridges and eight wooden drawbridges.
What's more, lining the canals are around 3000 houseboats of all shapes and sizes, some like luxury yachts and others more akin to floating junk yards.
I was a little startled to to be told that very few have holding tanks so their waste gets flushed straight into the canals. "Fortunately," says the commentator, "we are able to use the lock system to flush the water out, so twice a day when the tide is right the clean water comes in and the dirty water gets flushed out towards England, which seems fair, isn't it?"
The water may be filthy but it looks picturesque, and as you wander around you get some glorious views of stolid Dutch churches or quaint, narrow Amsterdam houses reflected in the canals.
Several of these houses stand at strange angles, apparently because over time the foundations have sunk into swampy soil below, and some of the oldest seem to be leaning against each other as though exhausted with age.
It was extremely disconcerting to walk into one such leaning tower, with apartments on each floor, and find the staircase tilting so far to one side that I felt in danger of sliding sideways.
It was also disturbing to walk into a pub for a reviving ale - it was a classic old place with sand on the floor and walls brown with decades of grime but great beer - and find most of the clientele puffing on cigarettes (amazing how quickly you get used to a smoke-free environment).
The city's famous coffee houses are also full of smoke though it has a rather different smell. One alley lined with coffee houses is so thick with cannabis fumes we reckoned you could get high just by standing around.
Apparently the authorities were to introduce smoke-free rules in Amsterdam last month. What effect would that have, I asked a local, who was smoking like a chimney while supping on a pint. "Nothing," he replied. "We will ignore it. Amsterdammers make up our own minds. We do not allow other people to tell us what to do."
And so, it seems, they have proved. The Government has since decided that marijuana smoke will be exempt and the ban will only apply to tobacco.
Drugs restricted in New Zealand are not just being smoked all around but freely on sale in drug shops. The window display in the interestingly named Headshop, for instance, includes pellets of peyote, dried magic mushrooms and cannabis lollies. Some fellow passengers on the Avalon Tapestry say they were offered both coke and ecstasy as they wandered through the city.
At the floating flower market, a cluster of flower shops bobbing picturesquely on the Singel Canal, you can buy varieties of tulip bulbs, masses of narcissus flowers ... and "cannabis starter kits".
There are plenty of other markets in Amsterdam specialising in food, antiques, art, clothing and stolen bicycles and they're all delightful places to visit.
At one of the food markets we stopped to buy the local speciality of chips with mayonnaise. You don't have to stick to mayo - at Manneken Pis, which was apparently named as Amsterdam's top chip place in 2006 and 2007, they offer more than 20 different sauces - but mayo, we're told, "is the authentic Dutch way to eat chips". It's surprisingly good.
Just round the corner, an old-fashion barrel-organ was playing, a bit further on a busker was knocking out a pleasant tune on a wok - yes, a wok - and in the main square another busker in a gorilla suit was simply standing on a box with a hat for donations on the ground in front. There wasn't any money in it but he seemed happy. Amsterdam is that sort of place.
