Amsterdam

What a civilized place, I think they have the only airport in the world that has smoking areas.
The food is horrible (except few restaurants) the wine is imported only (the country weather is not grapes friendly yet) but everything works like a clock over here, the buses are always on time, the people are so available and nice, everybody speaks a fairly good English and the city is much cleaner than I remembered in the past.
I haven't been in Amsterdam in long time, when I lived in Italy we used to come up here for long weekends couple time per year, the economy must be good because there are as many construction sites as there are in NYC, building almost as high as well. The city for those that never been there is build on water canals, the center is Dam Square and from there half circles expand from the Amstel canal to the outskirt of the city the names of the canals symbolize the status quo of the neighborhood, closer to what is now the center the Lords (Herengracht) than the Kaiser's hood (Kaisergracht) and then the Princes (Prinsengracht).
Amsterdam is now a neat, very clean and very liberal city, soft drugs are legal as well as prostitution, famous is the red light district were the "merchandise" is displayed in street windows.
Most of the center buildings are leaning forward like the Pisa Tower because of the soft underground soil composition and most of the streets are so narrow that some cases permit the passage to just on person at the time, the public transportation drivers were all instructed by Michael Schumacher (7 time F1 World Champions) in fact they are able to speed through the people in those narrow street without killing anybody I must say that is pretty amazing.
Over then sweet ladies and coffee shop I also satisfied my cultural side with the visit to the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum were I was able to admire Rembrandt Masterpieces along with the best Dutch artists.
I was really impressed by the improvement the city had since the last time I was there, the condition of it were excellent, streets were hole free and very clean, crime is going down averaging 17 violent crime per 1000 people per year (significantly lower than the us rates), no signs of weapons, gangs and the homicide rates are 20% below the US average, it looked like that so much liberty brought much more awareness to the people and the tourist that are visiting, the rules are respected and enforced without arrogance and unnecessary violence and the jail population is in a decrement trend.