Coffee Shops and the Red Light District.

So I did the naive thing in assuming "coffee shop" went like cafe, well no, they do have coffee and tea there but its not the main product purchase of choice. My first experience with this was rather unique because for some reason the coffee shop we decided to go into was occupied by mostly Americans. There were two couples one was in their 50's the other older then that. They too were there to buy and smoke. The couple we talked too was on what they called "old person backpacking" they had rented a car and drove all around Europe for a month or so. They had just sold their business (which I can only assume was in the millions) somewhere in Nashville Tenn. They were staying at fancy hotels, castles even, so they were really enjoying their retirement or whatever. The next coffee shop we visited was the next day, a popular one called The Grey Area. It was in the Rick steves just a couple of Americans who came over and wanted to make a living selling pot. Willie Nelson visited this place often, there were pictures of him on the wall (along with about a thousand other stickers and pictures, it took a while to go through) it only took about 2 minutes to realize this was a happening place because it soon became packed. There were like 15 people in a space like 10 by 12 with only 6-8 chairs. Most people stood, I got some coffee (they give it to you as bottomless coffee, which was why I wanted to go there, any time I can get free coffee I'm all over it.) We walked around some more outside, visited the many thousands of canals, and bridges. Later on that night we revisited the Red Light district because I was still not sure what the big deal really was. I was determined to figure out why it was so popular. At night all the windows are lined with red lights, some have black lights on the inside to highlight the outfits worn by the girls. There were more girls out but still it was just like a block long, and there were tons of nasty sex shops and sex shows and only a dozen or so girls standing in windows. Most of them nasty not even attractive, and not doing anything. I've been in a strip club once and so I guess I was expecting the girls to like have a pole and dance on it or something but they just stood there and and winked at you. Then as we were leaving we were shoved into a flow of traffic heading down a row of red. On each side of this alley were windows right next to each other one after another. This was a little surprising and I was a little more satisfied but that's when we were suddenly in a huge room all red, girls and windows everywhere, some girls standing outside their windows it was overwhelming and we ran out! Finally I thought, now I understand why this is such a big deal!! Apparently most of the side streets do this and although one street was enough to see I started to notice all the other ones. I can now appriciate why this is such a tourist attraction, but I will never understand why I was seeing so many Families with children walking around this area. Or the fact that this is legal? What guy in his right mind would do this? You are asking for a disease! Regardless it was a crazy experience and its worth visiting, just only if you're older then say 18.