Gareth O'Callaghan: The changing face of Amsterdam — why locals are pushing back against sex and drug tourism

Amsterdam’s locals are growing tired of sex and drug tourism. Is it time for the city to change course?

One of Amsterdam's main streets crowded with tourists. Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema, who has proposed banning foreigners from its cannabis cafés, also wants to move the red light district to the city’s outskirts, but sex workers are objecting.

I’m sitting on the corner of Dam Square, in the heart of Amsterdam, on a frosty spring morning as I write this, sipping a frothy café latte and people-watching, as I search for words to describe this glorious place. I ask myself if this is how Michael Palin must have felt when he embarked on the first of his many exotic trips. Amsterdam is the city of many trips, as I am discovering.

Words escape my first impressions because it’s exceptionally different to anywhere else I have visited in Europe. Idling is a way of life here, so I fit in perfectly. It’s early in the day, and in the year by tourist standards, but already this historic location, once the site of a shocking tragedy, is full of curious ramblers like me.