Wednesday, 22 April 2009
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A New And Improved Amsterdam?
Amsterdam is the 5th busiest tourist destination in Europe, with more than 4.2 million international visitors each year. It can be argued that the main tourist attractions in Amsterdam are their famous coffee shops where you can purchase and legally smoke marijuana and hash or in the case of mushrooms, you could visit Smartshops. It's not hard to see that visitors travel there for a little drug experimentation.
In recent years, the Dutch government has been working on cleaning up their country. They have already banned the sale of all magic mushrooms after a series of incidents involving tourists: A French girl and Icelandic man both jumped from buildings in separate incidents and a Danish tourist drove his car recklessly through a camping ground, nearly hitting other campers.On top of this, Amsterdam's mayor plans on closing nearly half of the sex shops, brothels, and the marijuana cafes located in the red light district.
I don't blame Amsterdam for wanting to clean up its city. What city would want to be associated with drugs and legal prostitution? Yet, I wonder if this will affect Tourism in Amsterdam. Amsterdam, in itself, is a very beautiful city with lots to offer outside of drugs and it's world famous red light district, as you can see in the following pictures.
Does the cleaning up of Amsterdam have an effect on whether or not you would like to travel there?
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- From: dannyb0y@xanga
- Name: Dan
- Location: California, United States
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Comments (11)
I might be more inclined to travel there if I knew I wouldn't have to walk through a continuous cloud of pot smoke.
But I think it would be a cool place to visit, even if they didn't clean it up.
Most people go there to smoke pot and hash
why not combine the two and double the tourism? go there to smoke up and then see the sights. it would become quite a magical experience...
yes. it will heavily effect the tourism.
Only time will tell. Not all tourists go to the same places and spend the same amount of money. The person who goes there solely for drugs might not spend as much on other tourism venues as travelers who go to museums. Likewise, there might be travelers who go for both: cultural sights and drugs.
I wonder what the average pothead's travel itinerary looks like.
i went to amsterdam... i didn't go to the coffee shops though... i was more interested in being a simple tourist with a camcorder and a camera
I
went to Amsterdam a lot of times ( 15 ), and there is a lot more than
pot and prostitutes. although there are a lot of tourists coming to see
that but after one day you have enough of that too. Amsterdam got a lot
of old buildings , canals, a certain kind of people, it is
multicultural, there are plenty of museums, places to shop around, nice
bars, nice terraces, and crazy dutch people.
so Amsterdam will survive with less pot and a smaller red light district.
I've been living in this city for 12 years. Tourism is a great part of this city income. Undoubtedly if the coffeeshops and prostitutes will vanish the tourists number will go down and the city's revenues will decrease. Amsterdam has fantastic museums and other cultural and historic sites much worthy of interest. But it's not exactly a holiday paradise with rain pouring down 10 months out of a year. Amsterdam has always been known as the city where whatever was not forbidden was allowed - one of the foremost principles of democracy and the free world. Forbidding all the liberties that come with this, closing the red light district and the coffeeshops will change this city's character for good, making it into another stuck up, expensive and arrogant community with nothing but designer boutiques, Starbucks, and conservative politicians in power. If that ever happens, that will be the time for me to move on, even if by that time I will have lived here most of my life.
i've been to Amsterdam
i went before i was actually legally allowed to smoke upand i STILL had funi hope they don't do this before i'm allowed to smoke up legally though (:I'll be pretty damn disappointed. I've always wanted to visit there for the drugs.