Amsterdam is a city like Venice founded on and still today focused around water and waterways. However, unlike Venice, Holland’s largest city is no mere museum piece. Amsterdam is a real, living and breathing metropolis, not just an oasis for tourists, those who like ‘a smoke’ and men in search of extra-marital sex.
In the canals beneath the stag parties and working girls, young Internet entrepreneurs strike deals across Europe from their houseboats and just outside the old core is the RAI, one of the continent’s key conference and business hubs. As well as the chugging canal boats, the city’s waterways also increasingly play home to massive cruise ships and cargo vessels from all over the world.