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The sex industry in Amsterdam draws in £1 billion a year and offers a solution to every craving. Among the narrow alley ways and winding cobbled streets are the neon lit windows of prostitutes in nothing more than underwear, sex merchants peddling their trade and clubs offering entertainment of the flesh.

Wandering aimlessly and staring with middle England curiosity through the throng are the stag parties and married couples who have left their unerotic life back on Dulwich or Milton Keynes housing estates. It is worth visiting one of the many live sex shows just to watch the audience.

These stage acts, which are not erotic in the least as most of the participants look like they are concentrating on an episode of One Man and His Dog, take place in converted theatres with the lights on and everyone's hands above waist height. The crowd is made up of people who drank slightly too much and have been cajoled into coming, middle class middle aged couples and Japanese tour parties. People who would never consider entering such an establishment on the seedy streets of Soho proudly march in and watch the hour long shows so that they have something interesting to discuss at their next dinner party.

The most amusing part is when a couple finish, as the audience is then unsure of sexual etiquette. What is the polite response when someone has performed well on stage? Do you applaud, shout well done and hoorah? The audience stumble away bemused at watching a normally private act turned into an well-orchestrated showpiece.

Amsterdam fortunately has far more to offer than just the thrills of drugs and sex. Forty minutes is all it takes from Luton to Schipol Airport, which in itself is only a twenty minute journey by train to the centre of the city. One hour away, it takes longer for most people to commute to work than it takes to visit essentially a foreign country. I say "essentially" as the journey from the airport passes through some of the most unremarkable landscape in existence. You could be travelling through any borough of south London, the same buildings, the same shops and the same advertisements line the rail tracks giving the impression that we have little to loose by joining Europe immediately.

With the current battle between the low cost flight companies, the independent traveller can make this journey as cost effective as they wish. A return flight to Amsterdam can be picked up for as little as £38.00 return if you are willing to hunt the Internet and fly at any given hour. We flew by EasyJet, who deserve the award for most understanding airline as we missed the plane by five minutes and so were booked on the next at no extra cost.

Daylight activities offer a host of attractions, with some of the best shopping and museums in Europe found in its compact centre. The Rijksmuseum is the oldest and most certainly the largest, holding most of Holland's national treasures. It is housed in an impressive Neo-gothic building though the museum itself is definitely of the old school. Its collection includes selections from Rembrandt and Vermeer as well as the history of the Dutch nation. The sheer size of the building makes it both impossible and exhausting to attempt to see it all, it is better simply to decide what you wish to view and stick to it.

In direct contrast to this monolith is the Van Gogh Museum. It has a more 21st Century approach to its collection offering the viewer a fine selection of his work. Housed in the concrete and glass building is also an Internet study area allowing visitors to get a more in-depth view of the artist's life and works.

On one of the three main canals that make up Amsterdam's arteries is the house lived in by Anne Frank during the Nazi occupation. It is a touching reminder of man's own courage and horror. The museum is quite stark, as there are few remains from the Jewish population who went into hiding. This some how amplifies the loneliness and isolation that the Frank family felt while hiding from the enemy. Anne's recollection is but one voice among millions but this helps to boil down the horror to a point the human mind can understand. If all of the voices spoke together the noise would be unbearable to the human heart.

The final museum is the infamous sex museum. This is little more than selections from the bottom draw of most red-blooded adolescents. It holds examples of pornographic art from through the ages and though intended to shock, it merely shows examples of what is on sale just around the corner. It appears that if you collect any likeness together and charge an entrance fee you can claim to have opened a museum. The hordes of people it attracts walk around the exhibits keeping to the same clipped tones and hushed voices normally employed when visiting the art galleries already mentioned.
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