Amsterdam, it's the little differences.

It's easy to see from the streets (not so much from the photos) that many buildings have issues standing up straight. Reason being, Amsterdam city is largely built on reclaimed marsh land and as such buildings have issues with sinkage. Many buildings are built with timber piles as foundation so when these rot, the houses shift.

Museums. How many does one city need? Amsterdam clearly needs a lot. There are actually over 50 museums in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh museum...

Rijksmusem...

Bikes galore. There are only 780,000 local residents in Amsterdam. There are over 880,000 bikes!

Bonus fact: each year between 12,000 and 15,000 bikes are fished up from city's canals.

To capture the complete size of some of the storage areas the photo would need to be at least 4 frames.

There are too many tourists. It's a bit hippocritical for me to say that after all I am one, but if Amsterdam wasn't overrun with them it would be even better. Locals tell me that the level of tourism has had an impact on customer service. Especially in the hospitality industry. There are so many customers to serve now that the quality has dropped for the sake of quantity.

The language barrier. There isn't one. At least for an English speaking tourist anyway. Dutch is actually quite similar and relative but you needn't bother speaking it (unless you like the challenge). Everyone I met or spoke to was fluent in English.

When I think European cities that have canals I immediately think of Venice. Amsterdam has 165 canals and 1281 bridges. Venice has about 170.

Yes Amsterdam is beautiful. Yes it's unique and very liberal. And yes, I will be back one day for sure.