ut Amsterdam isn't all about drugs. There's sex too.

Once the novelty of burning in public wore off, Harriet convinced me of my journalistic imperative to check out the Red Light District. Prostitution, like many things sinfully fun, is legal in certain areas of Amsterdam. But the way these ladies sell themselves is unlike anything I've ever seen.

The main streets of the Red Light are littered with bad coffeeshops, sex stores, and live shows ranging from your basic strip tease to those for very particular fetishes (one featured a hermaphrodite doing a horse — no kidding). Well dressed hucksters stand outside the theaters trying to lure in an audience. All types of people are on the main streets — men and women, young and old, tourists and locals, some in business suits and some wearing their only pair of jeans — but the real action takes place in the alleys.

Each of the dozens of alleys in the Red Light has between 5 and 50 windows, and behind each of these red lit windows sits a lingerie-clad woman passively selling herself. Some flirt; most just sit there. Most are young Asians or Latin Americans brought to Amsterdam in some sort of sleazy fashion. With the exception of the rare blonde, grandmother, dominatrix, or fat chic, they look remarkably similar: red Fredick's of Hollywood attire covering little of their unremarkable bodies, gaudy make-up, slight pouts most of the time, fake smiles and giggles when chosen by one of the hundreds of men crammed into the four-foot wide passageways. When they have a customer they close the curtains and do it right there. Five minutes cost around 60 bucks.

We wondered around the Red Light for a couple of hours watching the old men get their kicks, young boys choose their first mate, and American guys say things to their girlfriends like, "Are you sure you're okay?" Harriet was unmoved; I said "oh my God" a lot.

e decided to spend the next day exploring the more proper side of Amsterdam culture: Rembrandt's House, the Van Gogh Museum, the house where Anne Frank wrote her diary, the Heiniken Brewery. But those kind of places close early on Sunday — 5 p.m. I think — and we overslept. We decided to check out the Sex Museum instead.

The Amsterdam Sex Museum houses an incredible exhibit on the sexual history of the world. We're not just talking dirty pictures and dildos, we're talking dirty pictures from every possible culture and dildos older than God. There are cave people fucking, ancient Greeks fucking, ancient Romans fucking, ancient Chinese fucking, huge bear trap looking things to keep the ancient English from fucking, and two eight foot boners with testicles you can sit down on.

The modern wing features American and European pornography from every decade since 1900. I found the gritty, awkward, and strangely innocent porn of yesteryear much more exciting than the soft-focused, airbrushed, digitally manipulated fantasy shit of today, until one thought occurred to me: my grandparents. That pretty much killed that.

Outside the final room was a sign: "Warning: Some things in this exhibit my be considered offensive. Enter at your own risk. No complaints please." Again, journalistic imperative mandated we enter, damn the risk.

Unfortunately I can't tell you what was inside. It was gross, real gross, too gross to be mentioned in this family magazine. Remember the horse and hermaphrodite? Grosser than that. Ever seen a snuff film? This was grosser yet.

I said, "oh my God" a lot. So did Harriet.

e had time for one more coffeeshop before I had to catch the night train out of town. We found ourselves in a quaint little establishment called The 36, where you can sit right on a canal and play Spot the American. It's easy — they're the ones who take one hit off a joint before passing it on. The locals are prone to take five, eight, or just finish the whole damn thing and roll another.

We smoked the remainder of the hash and ruminated on our adventures in this, the other Euro-Disney. I was keen to leave, to get back to my own world where marijuana is still considered rebellious and sex is about love, not money. But Harriet, she likes it here. She may just dangle in the fog for awhile.