The Red Light District…Meh

We made the trek to the Red Light District mainly because everyone who knows we are going to Amsterdam has asked “Are you going to see the Red Light District?”. Well, that and if we are going to go into one of “those” cafes…you know, wink wink. There’s a lot of “wink-winking” that goes on when you mention Amsterdam I’ve found.

We arrived at the Red Light District via a Canalbus that let us off right at the Central Train Station. It was raining pretty heavily and it was also right around 5:30 so the streets were filled with a soggy mix of business people rushing home and tourists thronging toward the district. The streets were packed, and about half the people had umbrellas, whose stays seemed to hover right at my eye level making navigation hazardous, if not nearly blinding.

As we entered the district the crowds thinned a bit and we were able to walk a bit more freely. We spent a little time in several of the Dutch souvenir shops, and actually considered buying some “wink-wink” related t-shirt for our friend Jonathan, but we relented and moved on.

There are many narrow alleys that lead off the main street and in the rain and gathering dusk, it is easy to see how this area is well suited for skulking and seemy exploration.

We were intrigued by one alleyway mainly because at the end of it was a church. We headed down the narrow walk and came out upon a winding walkway lined with a few offices, and then several of the display rooms. I’m sure that they have a more official term, but the feeling that I had was of looking at a human sized version of a vending machine. Each small cubicle had a woman in it, dressed in some variation of red underwear and lingerie. The women were all foreign born, dark skinned and well fed. They also looked bored as they watched us watching them. Toward the end of this little block was a day care center that must have served the women in the windows. Quite a clever little business opportunity actually, if you think about it. None of the offices where I have worked had day care right there where I worked.

We circled on around the alley that encircled the church we had seen. The church was closed, and I suspected that the women in this little area may have done quite well simply because they could tap into the “doing-it-in-the-shadow-of-the-church” crowd.

The rain was coming harder and it was getting darker, so we headed back to the train station to catch the canalbus back to the hotel.

So we saw it, but Meh it really didn’t do much for me.