When I actually came here, I realised there were two Hollands. One for the locals, and one for the tourists. And they aren't the same. The Holland for locals is clean, orderly and almost boring, which could best be likened to Amsterdam in the day. The Holland for tourists though, is the pot smoking, window whoring stuff of legend, the Amsterdam of night. One thing you'll quickly notice is, there is not a single Dutch local walking the streets of the red light district at night, save for the policemen. And in all the coffeeshops and magic mushroom shops, almost all of the patrons are tourists. Tourism keeps the legend alive.
On a side note, if you want to see the "coffeeshops" (what they call the pot cafes here), or the window girls, come to Amsterdam within the next 10 years. The Dutch authorities are slowly cleaning up the place, and in 10 years, the Amsterdam of legend may be no more.
As it is, they are no longer issuing new licenses for coffeeshops, although they are quick to revoke it if any rule is broken, and they are slowly selling away the buildings traditionally used for "window shopping". In 10 years, Amsterdam might be clean, boring, and very much dead.
Some of the interesting things I saw around Holland
The cube houses of Rotterdam
It was quite surreal to see cube shaped houses. It was like a scene out of Dali's imagination or something.
Their interiors are actually quite cosy though, and much more spacious than you'd expect a cube shaped house to be. Still, it's suitable for no more than 2 people.Delft, a small Dutch town near Rotterdam
It's funny how people in Holland can do just about anything they please as long as they don't disturb the peace.
The city square of Delft. Every European town with any history at all has one. This one was remarkable because the church tower was really tall. Take that away and this could pretty much be anywhere in Europe.
Dutch clogs! I went into this shop, and after several attempts at picking a souvenir and creating quite a bit of noise, the lady boss of the shop joked that she'd have to hire me soon because I was going to break something. After a chat with her, we found out she actually grew up in Malaysia. How cool is that.Parallel parking in Holland
One thing about the Dutch is, their parellel parking skills are imba. They can fit the biggest vehicles into the smallest spaces. Here are the 3 top examples of parallel parking skills.
This looks pretty tough.
This one's tougher because he had a bicycle in front and his vehicle is longer.
This is just ridiculous. I don't know how he did it without knocking down the trees on either side, or going into the canal.Amsterdam
That metal structure on the right is a public urinal for drunk guys. They used to have them for females too, but not anymore. In the 70s, at the height of flower power, women lobbied for the right to urinate in public in Amsterdam, like the males could, in the name of equality between the sexes. They got their wish, and public urinals were specially built for them.
See that orange structure? That was a female public urinal. However, it is no longer in use. Junkies used to hide inside and assault women who used them. It turns out the women got more than they bargained for, and in the end they were closed.
Coffeeshops. The latter, the one our tour guide was in front of, De Kampring, it's the most famous and supposedly "best" coffeeshop in Amsterdam, by the popular pot vote. I'm not sure how people who have visited all the pot joints can still be in any capacity to vote, but apparently bribery is involved. Give a man enough free pot, and he'll be too stoned to vote otherwise. Throw in a magic mushroom, and he'll even sing praises of your joint for you.
If you open a pot shop, you call it a coffeeshop. If you open a museum, you can call it Marajuana, because it is educational. Seriously, I don't get the Dutch sometimes.
Chinatown. Lol. There are some things you can be sure about. Wherever there are people, there will be Chinese. Wherever there are Chinese, there will be Chinatown.
This metal plate has an interesting story behind it. I call it the anti-wee. Basically, the Dutch got so sick of people pissing in street corners they asked the students of Amsterdam's university to tackle the problem. They designed this thing, and it is shaped in such a way that if you piss on it in a drunken stupor, the piss comes back right at you and you wind up smelling like wee. Very damned brilliant.
The red house there is the narrowest house in Amsterdam. It is narrower than the owner is tall, being only about 1.8metres wide, and most Dutch are well over 6 feet tall.
Windmill! The last remaining windmill in Amsterdam, now converted into a pub.
Magic mushroom shop. They had mushrooms inside that were rated on "Brain, Power, Speed" among other attributes. You know, like those games where you have characters and each one has more or less of each attribute, displayed as a series of bars. It was exactly like that. I asked the shopowner if I could take a picture of them, but he was like "this area here (pointing to the souvenirs), you can take. Everything else, no." 
Heading into the red light district.
The red light district. Don't ever try to take a shot of the prostitutes in the windows, because they hate it. They have been known to smash cameras, or snatch them and throw them into the canal. On top of that, some of them even keep a flask of wee to throw at the tourists who takes their picture. There are also pimps hanging around who will stop you if you try to do anything funny.I won't describe what it's like to walk through a place where women are exhibited like goods in glass display cases. It's beyond words really.