Last week Michael and I had the good fortune to do some work from Amsterdam. Before leaving, thoughts of sitting at an outdoor cafe and surfing/working via wifi danced in my head. But, alas, it was not to be.

I had done my research. HotSpot Amsterdam supposedly had the area around our hotel (Leidseplein) covered. Granted, it wasn't going to be fast, but command-line work, email and RSS don't need top speeds.

After trotting around much of southern Amsterdam over the course of the first few days, we were defeated. The conversation generally went like this: "Ooh, the wifi detector has 2 bars. Pull out the laptop. Yeah, I can see it. Oh this is painfully slow. Crap, the checkout page times out. Let's try somewhere less. Wait, let me try this again. Crap. Okay, fine."

Internet cafes were no help. You can use their locked down, slow, Windows machines, if they are working, with about 3 inches separating you and the next guy for 1.25 Euro/hr. There is no place to plug in your own laptop though. The idea seemed very foreign to the people that operated these establishments.

The main issue may be that they don't have the demand for the service. Michael and I were the only ones I saw who ever opened up laptops at a cafe. I can fully accept that the need for internet access everywhere is my own obsessive/compulsive disorder. Wanting to sit at a cafe, drink coffee or beer with friends, without thinking of checking your email, that's perfectly normal. But I'll rant as an ugly American because that's what we do on our blogs.

Overall I had a good time in Amsterdam. Great cheese, great people. Shopping, canals, and bikes everywhere. When we needed to work, we were able to get online at the hotel for a very inflated price. Sitting in a hotel room working is just not what I wanted. Woe is me, I got to travel to Amsterdam but had to pay a lot for internet access.