Sexy travel destinations Hot party towns Sights in Holland

Imagine buying marijuana along with your espresso beside Toronto's Royal York Hotel. Or window-shopping, literally, for a prostitute behind the Westin Harbour Castle. And doing both openly and legally.

You can in Holland, within a few steps of two of Amsterdam's top hotels.

Big cities on this side of the Atlantic downplay their seedier sides; Amsterdam marks its Red Light District on tourist maps. It accepts that hookers, soft drugs and porn appeal to some folks. Rather than criminalize those activities, it legitimized them.

There's another reason to visit the Red Light District. It's in one of the oldest parts of the city, with winding cobblestoned streets and canals lined with tipsy-looking buildings whose staircases are so narrow an outside hook and pulley are needed to move furniture in and out.

Even during the day, pot-smokers and peeping Toms are outnumbered by parties of camera-snapping foreign tourists.

On the tongue-twisting Oudezijds Voorburgwal, right behind the five-star Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, landmarks such as the 14th-century Oudekerk ("old church'') coexist with eye-level windows in which scantily clad women -- unionized and taxpaying, by the way -- display their wares.

There are branches of The Bulldog, one of many "coffeeshops'' where coffee is indeed available but whose main attraction is a menu listing grass and hash by brand and price, available to anyone 18 or older.

Across the street, beside the posh Sofitel The Grand Amsterdam, you can light up in a much more genteel version, complete with green awning. A few doors down is the ABC Sex-Video Shop. For details, try www.amsterdam.info/red-light-district.

Other attractions will be higher up on most visitors' lists. The art treasures of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum are obvious ones, but I'd make time for a canal boat trip.

Amsterdam's core is so criss-crossed with waterways it's been called the Venice of the North. An hour-long narrated cruise revealed grimy working barges, houseboats with lace curtains and potted plants, a couple reclining in a dinghy, noses buried in books, arched bridges lined with flower boxes and parked bicycles, the 80-metre spire of the Westerkirk, Holland's largest Protestant church, and major tourist draws such as the Anne Frank House. A relaxing and rewarding introduction to one of Europe's more interesting cities.

Using an I amsterdam card, I did a canal cruise, hopped a tram to the Rijksmuseum, home of Rembrandt's Night Watch, then walked to the nearby Van Gogh for Vincent's dazzling impressions of southern France.

Another tram dropped me near the dam, the city's busiest square, where I had to use cash for a beer at a sidewalk cafe.

Besides covering the canal tour, public transit and the two museums, my I amsterdam card provided 25-per-cent discounts on meals, concerts and attractions and free entry to 24 other museums. This made it a great way to visit some of Amsterdam's lesser known sights. Among them:

- Museum Van Loon: Built in 1672 and lived in continuously by the same family from the 1800s until 1945. The furnishings are virtually intact and the walls lined with the portraits of 14 generations. Watch the video first.

- Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Dear Lord in the Attic): Hidden in a canal house, it recalls a time when Catholics had to abandon conventional churches.

A 24-hour card costs 33 euros (Cdn $52.80). Paying individually for just the few things I did would have cost 39 euros. Had I been able to make an earlier start, the savings would have been much greater. Details at www.amsterdamtourist.nl.