Yeah, I am from Amsterdam, left 20 years ago and can't recognize the city I left then. It is overrun with entitled tourist and braindead drunk Brits. Glad I live in the country side of the Netherlands now.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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I lived in Amsterdam in 2005-2007. The centre was a bit of a no-go zone at the weekends, particularly in the evenings, but otherwise I find it a wonderful city to live in. Has it changed so much?
I live in Amsterdam since 2012 and visited often before. Tourism has increased massively. You might remember having tourist season, where it got busy over the summer, but outside of it it wasn't too crazy. These days it's tourist season year round. With them comes stupid tourist shops (nutella shops were all the rage, now it's candy shops).
The amount of people getting on cheap flights and then absolutely fucked up in the city center is saddening. The red light district has been shrunk by closing many windows, so these people now congregate in only a few streets around the oude kerk. On the weekend you could walk over their heads. Next step the city wants to take is close the red light district completely and move the prostitution to an 'erotic center'. None of the stadsdelen want it in their part of town, so I doubt it will be successful. I think it's also ridiculous to kill such a historic part of the city (prostitution on the Wallen is happening continuously since the 15th century).
Outside of the city center the city still has great spirit. Hardly any tourists and still plenty of excitement to be had. Of course the city keeps developing, for better and for worse (housing crisis is hitting hard), but this is the nature of almost all living cities. I really enjoy living here, although I rarely visit the city center anymore. I have everything I want in Noord, where it's much more down to earth and mellow.
Is there a time of year to go, when there aren't so many tourists? Although you say it's 'all year round'.
I really wish Barcelona would follow this example ... it's not that hard to stay clear of the tourists if you avoid the Ramblas, but the pollution spreads through the air and it really does some damage. Supposedly it's not even like this type of tourism brings in a lot of money ...
Fair. I can understand both the appeal of cruising from city to city on a swimming hotel and the hate from these cities against the ever repeating sudden influx of thousands of tourists with each cruise ship.
the problem ist that cruise lines advertise it as a great influx of money dor the cities, but often they don't spend that much, as food and stuff is already on the ship. Meanwhile the pollution and influx drives land based tourists away.
I mean... It's probably the laziest form of traveling and contributes the most pollution. I would have no bad feelings against it being banned by more countries.
Never been on a cruise, but you get to travel without leaving your room. Go to bed one night and wake up in a different city the next morning. Unfortunately, sleeping trains are not very common in europe, or somewhat expensive.
Which sucks because trains are cool af and I've always wanted to ride one with a private room. They used to be cheaper than other modes of transportation but I never got around to it. Now they're just as expensive if not more and I missed my chance for cheap train rides 😔
I've been on four cruises. They are great for visiting many hard-to-reach spots, like the Aleutian islands and Alaska, or low-population islands in the pacific.
They are terrible for visiting crowded, small cities, like European "old towns" like Venice and Amsterdam, where there's already plenty of $15 flights from other major population hubs.
Easy to fit one ship load of people onto the large beaches of a small Vanuatu island. Hard to shove three ship loads of people through the Anne Frank museum.
I don't get cruises, whenever you get somewhere it's always crowded and you don't have enough freedom to actually experience any place
I mean... I am no expert but won't that increase eventually the flights, isn't that also bad? Form the pollution point of view I mean... The other stuff I guess makes sense.
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