Sarphati Hotel Amsterdam

Take a canal tour. I'm not talking about one of those touristy, covered boats...I talking about a little motor boat with no cover. Its run by an expat Yank, and it can be booked at Boom Chicago at the Leidesplein (Dutchies, please pardon my spelling). Its a much better way to see the canals.All of the strange sights. Here's a recap of some of the weird things I saw:
* We had just checked into our hostel, and were trying to soak in Amsterdam. Well, the three of us were standing next to this busy street, and this guy was riding his bike while eating a burger. I don?t know if he got his wheels in the light-rail tracks or what, but he started to swerve around some. He could have pulled out of it, but he was intent on saving that burger, so he was contorting his whole body so that his burger wouldn?t fall. Sure enough, it caused him to wipe out. As fate would have it, his face fell right on the burger, the same burger which he was so desparetly trying to save. He stood up, and there was mayonnaise (what else?) all over his face. Thank goodness he wasn?t hurt, because then we could laugh our butts off.
* Later, in the same evening, the three of us are having a beer overlooking the Rembrantsplien (a nice big plaza with tons of neon?sort of a Dutch times square), and the group next to us and especially right next to Michelle, broke out in a fight, and not a TV fight, either. They were throwing beer mugs and even a table. Glass was shattering and Huge even got some shards in his skin. The weird part was that the police were there immediately, and they were so blase about the whole thing. They were trying to ask what happened, all while these guys are trying to get back at each other. In the States, those guys would have been on the pavement and cuffed in a New York minute, but not here. I think they should watch some episodes of ?Cops? or something so they know how to handle that kind of situation right.
* The Dutch men have this thing with peeing in the street. I guess this is a a problem for some time, so the city has tried to combat it by installing porta-potties around the city. Of course these are not porta-potties that you and I are familiar with. These are four open-air urinals arranged in a sort of clover-like pattern with only a small partition blocking the view. No door, no nothing. It?s basically like peeing against a wall. Of course, we still saw a few Dutch men urinating all over the street anyway, onto bikes, and against random walls. Strange.