Amsterdamn

This man was taking this small person for a walk in Amsterdam, what he doesn't know is the pavement ends soon, there is a canal with no fence the other side of the road, and she will repeatly say 'ushchair' until you want to shout, 'WHAT ABOUT the bloody ushcahir?!'

Xss, Starbucks and I visited Amsterdam last week. Whilst it was great to be together as a family, it was disappointing how un-family friendly it was, in fact at times it was family hostile. This started on the train from the airport into town when two young single individuals took the fold down seats near the doors and left myself and Xss (and a random old lady) struggling the whole journey with a small baby, push chair and 2 backpacks unable to get down the train stairs to where the rest of the seating was.

Amsterdam was pretty but there is not much pavement for a young child, or pushchair to chundle along, the narrow picturesque warehouse style houses seem to all contain steep staircases with no way to bring a pushchair up, and who stole all the highchairs? we only found one all week. Also there are swings, but no baby swings, the longest Starbucks managed to stay on a normal swing was 40 seconds before she fell off. We tried a few times for our amusment.

I think ultimately i was upset as they had all these little independent coffee shops (there are two types there 'coffeeshops' - which sell weed, and coffee shops which sell coffee- hard to determine when you dont speak dutch.) We hoped to come to Amsterdam to laze around, go to the park and drink coffee in nice places. However, due to everyone having such large un-covered windows open to the street you're never sure when you step into a shop if you are walking into a clothes shop, a bar, or just someones living room.

I don't like coffee, so i'm loath to admit it, but by association, i dont like independent coffee shops. Lazing around was limited to parks and Ann Frank house.

22/52 Happy? i don't live in Amsterdam