Amsterdam cleans up it's image

The reason I ask is that the Amsterdam City Council voted last month to shutter nearly half of its brothels, sex clubs and marijuana-dispensing coffeehouses in an attempt to cut down on organized crime.

"It’ll (still) be a place with 200 windows (for prostitutes) and 30 coffee shops, which you can’t find anywhere else in the world - very exciting, but also with cultural attractions," City Council member Lodewijk Asscher told the news media. The goal is to make the Amsterdam prostitution and drug scene more wholesome for tourists.

And maybe it’s a worthy goal. When I was 21, fellow student Mark Duffy and I spent a weekend in the city. We ate in cafes, visited museums and rode bikes.

In the evening, like many tourists, we visited the red-light district, laughing at the sight of hookers sitting in shop windows.