My first 2 trips to amsterdam - a retrospective
Posted: Sun 19th Sep 2010 11:58 pm
I am visiting Amsterdam in March and only recently found this site so after reading all these great trip reports I thought I'd give the lowdown on my first 2 trips. It will probably be just a lot of random tales but they are my memories of amsterdam and good memories they are.
My first trip to Amsterdam was booked for March 2008 and was to be mine and my wife's first trip away from our then 3 month old daughter. We arrived around 8 on a cool Friday evening and walked out of Centraal Station with our map in hand and made our way towards our hotel, the Hotel France just off Zeedijk. A buzz of anticipation for getting out and sampling some wares descended and rendered our map reading skills non-existent and it took us 20 minutes to find our hotel which we were to later find out was no more than a 3 minute walk from the station, door to door. The nice man at the check-in desk offered us a room with a window - nice! A room with a view. We picked up our bags and headed to the room for a swift freshen-up. When we opened the door to our cell, sorry, room we saw our window - 8ft above our bed, the size of a letterbox and with a view of a brick wall. Undetered, we finally headed out into the 'dam.
We walked down Achterburgwal and smelled the funky, soapy smell of a nice bit of bud which tickled our nasal cavities - it was on. We needed to find smoke but unaccustomed to amsterdam we just wandered aimlessly looking for anything that resembled a coffeeshop. We saw a Bulldog but even the missus had heard of their tourist-trap rep. Finally, the missus spied a neon sign - COF EE SHOP (one of the F's was on the blink) and we wandered in, trembling with anticipation. The coffeeshop in question was The Bassment. I perused the menu, trying to look like a pro but the budtender instantly knew we were amsterdam virgins. Fair play to the fella, he spent a bit of time talking to me about how much I smoke at home, if I had any favourite tastes/strains etc etc. He needed to spend a fair bit of time chatting to me though because I could barely hear him above the music and needed him to repeat things numerous times. We settled on 2gr of NY Diesel and the dude sorted us some papers and roaches and a couple of fresh OJs. We parked our arses on a table next to some pretty fucked looking Italians and I got on with the job in hand. The combination of the excitement of being in amsterdam for the first time, rolling my first joint in amsterdam and being mega-tired from 3 months of a newborn baby conspired against me and I took to rolling the joint like a complete amateur. Finally after 20 minutes of trembling hands and spilled mix I raised the joint to my lips - fuck, it tasted good, but it also looked like a tampon - a fact not lost on our fucked Italian friends.
After we had left The Bassment we went for a couple of beers in a few bars and smoked a few more joints (rolled better this time) before the munchies kicked in with a vengeance. I asked the missus what she fancied - "anything" she replied, which was good because I didn't have a clue in which direction we'd find her food of choice. We found a rib & steak place somewhere (surprise, surprise) and went in. We didn't know what time it was and were told they were just about to close, so we turned on our heels. We turned a full 360 spin as the friendly manager told us they would make us something to eat if we wanted to sit down. A steak and a pasta dish later and we ask our host for the bill, he hands it over and I take some cash out of my wallet plus extra for a good tip. As we go to leave the manager shouts us over to come and have a drink on him with the rest of the restaurant staff. What a nice chap. A couple of pints swing our way and we chat with the manager who then brings out a bottle of sambuca and pours us a couple of big ones. Feeling tipsy and stoned we say our goodbyes and walk back toward the hotel. As we get changed for bed I look in my wallet to see what the cash situation is like. It is E20 light. It is then I realise that the E10 tip I had given the restauteur for our E40 dinner was in fact a E30 tip - damn you sticky Euro notes! - no wonder we had made ourselves a new friend! Another NYD spliff and the promise of not having to get up at the crack of dawn sent us into a deep, relaxing slumber.
The next day of our trip was to be a day of mostly wandering stoned around looking for tourist things to do while nipping into any coffeeshops we might see. We made a stop in the cannabis museum after hearing a friend say he got a bit of a vape bag when he went in there. I didn't get any vape. We found ourselves walking past GreenHouse Centrum and we dived in for a a couple more grams and some drinks to keep us going. I approached the dealers booth which had a couple of American tourists stood around. I waited for them to make a choice for absolutely ages when the dealer nodded me to make my order. I asked what the sweetest on the menu was (I do loves me a sweet, sweet draw) and he gave a non-plussed shrug and offered me a box to smell. It smelled good, a couple of grams of that (can't remember what it was) and a couple of grams of SSH were purchased. Off we went to sit down. Again, we had to share a table, this time with a heavy-eyed group of young men from the Midlands. The guy who was sat next to me was a non-smoker and he engaged me in conversation almost immediately. I got the gist that conversation was something that had been in short supply during his trip to amsterdam. A couple of the group decided they did have voice boxes and we had a nice little chat with these guys while we all passed joints around.
OJs finished, we headed off for a bit of museum hopping. On our way there we passed a couple of sex shows and the bouncers outside were trying to entice people in. We wobbled our way in the direction of the first bouncer when he jumps out in front of us. The missus jumps slightly (not me though, I'm a tough man! lol). "Hey, you wanna come into the suckiest, fuckiest filth-fest this side of amsterdam city?" enquires our gorrila suited assailant. "We're okay thanks" says the missus as I try to stop myself creasing up with laughter. Next door (another sex show), the bouncer calmly walks away from his post and stands in the middle of the street directly in front of us before fixing my gaze. He held it for an uncomfortably long (or so it seemed) amount of time before he told me in a thick Dutch accent that "Your wife, she needsh the shex". That is when I dropped to my knees (not like that you filthy bunch) and proceeded to laugh so hard that I thought I'd broken a rib. The bouncers from both doors gave us a jolly wave on our way and we continued our journey towards wherever it was we were going.
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur after that, and apart from the museums all I really remember is sitting in the pub next to our hotel, too battered to speak. Off to bed soon after.
Our next day was the day we were to leave and started bright and early with breakfast in the pub next to the hotel. A fairly poor selection, truth be told, was nonetheless ravenously devoured after a wake 'n' bake of a SSH/random/NYD spliff. We decide to go to Anne Frank's house and smoked a couple of joints as we walked for what seemed like hours. Finally there and we queued for what literally was hours. A fat American woman sat on my face as we walked up some steep steps. I'm not a fan of Anne Frank's house. As we walked back across town we found the Hard Rock cafe and decided to stop in for a bite to eat. Our food order took an hour and a half to arrive and the girl who served us looked like Jar Jar Binks and that is as memorable as our HRC experience got. We salvaged our day by getting a couple of grams of BlueBerry from Hill Street Blues on the Market and finding a piece of empty roadside next to a canal where we sat and whiled the afternoon away smoking spliffs in the sun as we waited to make the trip back home, stoned and very content.
Our second visit to Amsterdam occured in August of 2009 and this time we were with a couple of friends who were dating at that point. We decided to stay onboard a houseboat, a short bus-ride from the centre. We stepped out of the station and found our way to our houseboat - a fantastic old boat with an empty stretch of quayside next to it, in which we would swim daily. Jumping back onto the bus after meeting up with our landlord, we headed towards Haarlemmer Straat and Dampkring 2. A touch more au fait with coffeeshop protocol and we order a couple of grams of Laughing Buddha and a couple of grams of SSH and head upstairs for a drink and a smoke. Not having a grinder, I make my way back down to the bar and ask the 2 girls behind the bar if they had one I could borrow. They did - a GreenHouse branded one that they said I could keep. A couple of spliffs upstairs and we become acutely aware of just how disturbing the images on the TVs are in that place. Instead of staying we decide to roll a couple of joints for the walk to the Pancake Bakery on Prinsengracht. By now the SSH is hitting heavy and the walk seems like weeks and my knees feel like lead and I am aware that I have a little cold sweat on the inside of my palms. Not a minute too soon and we hit the Pancake Bakery. I become instantly engrossed in watching the thousands of flies which gleefully take dips into the huge pots of complimentary syrup. My pancake arrives and I instantly decide against a drizzle of the syrup. The tasty sweetness of the pancake and the cold of my Heineken soon have me feeling fit again and we finish up and head back towards Haarlemmer Straat. We decide to have an aperatif of an apple hookah at the Wonder Bar and are delighted to find the window pillows free for us to jump on. The barman expertly prepares our pipe and we all toke on the thick apple shisha smoke between puffs of spliffs and blunts which are also being passed around. A short bus ride later and we are back at our houseboat after a thoroughly enjoyable first afternoon in amsterdam.
Between us all it was decided that due to the fantastic weather and the fantastic accomodation (and a lack of cash) we'd have a relaxing trip and not do much other than sit around parks, canals and our houseboat smoking weed and drinking beer and wine and this is basically exactly what we did. As soon as I got up I skinned up a fat buddha spliff, chucked my headphones into my ears and took off to the nearest Albert Hein to stock up on brioche and strong coffee to rejuvenate us all. As I walked the canal, smoking my spliff and watching the locals getting on with starting their days I thought just how nice it'd be to be able to do this at home (legally - I still do this at home, just with stealth!). It's a plant FFS. A few locals nodded a hello and I reciprocated and before I knew it I was back on the boat getting the kettle on. After breakfast we all jumped into the quay and had a swim in the icy water. The barrel barbeque sat on the quayside piqued our interest and we all headed out of the water to go to town to pick up smoke and barbeque supplies. A stoned amble around amsterdam yielded everything we needed so we head over to Leidseplein to look at the statue people. After annoying them by pointing cameras and not cash at them we find a grassy area next to a canal with a solitary tree in it. The beating sun and hazy stonedness force us to climb over the mini railing that separated the canalside garden from the street and we park ourselves on our jackets and crack open a couple of less-cool-than-they-were-when-we-bought-them Heinekens and roll some more joints. A couple of hours fly by as we chat and smoke and drink so we blearily head back to our houseboat to attempt to light a barbeque. It lights first time without incident. We cook our meat to perfection and no-one has a bad 'dam experience. Our landlord comes over smoking a fat Blue-something spliff and offers to drive us into town if we want. Without plans to head central the missus' suggestion of a mint hookah and more spliffs in Wonder Bar has us jumping into the back of the landlords motor and speeding the short distance to Centraal Station where our host lets us out. Inside Wonder Bar we find the pillows in the window aren't free but there is enough room for us 4. Sat opposite us were 3 young guys from Dublin. 2 guys look like boy-band members and the other is attired more gothically than his counterparts. And he looks SICK. We had inadvertantly sat down in the middle of this dudes massive whitey. We begin talking to the 2 boy-band guys (lets call them the Jonas Bros). This is when we found out they were from Dublin. Unfortunately I was pissed and stoned and couldn't hear (I am a little bit deaf I think) where they were saying they were from and having the Jonas Bros in my head I assumed they had said Boston. This is where things went wrong for the goth guy who was having a whitey. If things weren't scary enough for him on his first night in amsterdam he was suddenly confronted with a pissed, stoned man asking him questions about American culture, food, drink etc while tooting on a hookah pipe like the Alice in Wonderland caterpillar. That is when he rolled out of the window onto the street and emptied his guts just outside the door to the establishment he was in not 5 seconds earlier. The Jonas Bros looked on in horror. The missus, ever the good samaritan, called the barman over and tried to tell him the tale. Unfortunately he either didn't hear or was uninterested because he looked at us and just closed the window on the ill goth kid. The missus jumped up, incredulous and gave the barman a piece of her mind. He apologised and took a glass of juice to the ill kid, gave his friends some advice and re-opend the window for us. Our little bit of drama kept us nicely entertained as we rode the bus back to our houseboat.
Day 3 opened with another trip to our local AH, more fresh brioche and coffee and another dip in the quay. We had planned to go and see some old windmills somewhere and needed to get a bus 45 minutes out of town to get there. We headed to Centraal Station and topped up our weed supplies with a few grams of King Hassan hash and some more Laughing Buddha. Our backpacks contained a picnic and plenty of beer and wine. We spent the bus journey to the windmills rolling hash and hash/bud joints. The windmills were good but we had planned a full day to be there and it could easily have been done in a couple of hours. We had a few hours to kill before the bus back so we went on a touristy boat trip down the river and listened to the not-very-amusing tour guide. Back on dry-land, bladders full we tried to find a toilet. The only toilets were pay toilets - cost a couple of Cents. So we all pay to relieve ourselves and head to a secluded area of the river to enjoy our spliffs and picnic and dip our toes into the waters. A couple of cans and a couple of spliffs later and I spy an elderly gent a couple of hundred yards to my left, wandering behind a windmill. A quick look around and the man pulls his pants and underpants right down to his ankles and proceeds to piss directly on this old windmill. We are all watching in amazement, not least because he is standing side-on to us and we can clearly see his wrinkly old arse and his greying cock and bollocks, but also because of all the open space behind the windmill, the old man thought ON the windmill would be the best place to piss. After pulling his pants up he nonchalantly walked back around the windmill to rejoin his tour group and we packed our picnic away and headed towards our bus. We arrived back in central amsterdam with nothing planned to do so we all headed to a smart shop to get some truffles and an AH to get some dinner. We got home and we got HIGH. Then we went to bed, still tripping balls.
On our last day in amsterdam we didn't have to be off our houseboat before our plane left so we spent most of the morning lazing around, smoking weed and packing up. As mentioned, the quay was such a great place to take a swim, so before we left the houseboat to head into the centre we decide on one last dip. My friend, D's swimming shorts were also his traveling home shorts as they were the cleanest he had left, so he was reluctant to get in. Cajoled by the three of us already in the water he finally relented and whipped his top, shoes and socks off before dramatically diving into the freezing cold water. And he stayed under for a while. And a little longer. "SHIT!" he shouted as he finally popped his head out of the water. "WTF?" we all reply. Turns out that when he dived in, he realised his camera was in his pocket and it subsequently fell out of the pocket underwater. Somehow he had carried on down into the water chasing it in his dive and had almost got it as he thought he might have grabbed the strap as it sunk into the abyss but he emerged camera-less. For all of the photo's from this trip you'd have to go looking on the bottom of the Ij. Dried off, we head into town and do some last minute souvenir shopping before leaving Centraal Station for Schipol Airport. 2 hours later we are back home but still amsterdam stoned.
Ffor me amsterdam is the maddest place on the planet. I have had 2 very different trips to amsterdam and seen very different sights each time. I hope my next trip will be as eventful (of which I am sure). Sorry about the lack of weed detail but for me amsterdam is a lot more than just weed, weed just enhances amsterdam.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it
My first trip to Amsterdam was booked for March 2008 and was to be mine and my wife's first trip away from our then 3 month old daughter. We arrived around 8 on a cool Friday evening and walked out of Centraal Station with our map in hand and made our way towards our hotel, the Hotel France just off Zeedijk. A buzz of anticipation for getting out and sampling some wares descended and rendered our map reading skills non-existent and it took us 20 minutes to find our hotel which we were to later find out was no more than a 3 minute walk from the station, door to door. The nice man at the check-in desk offered us a room with a window - nice! A room with a view. We picked up our bags and headed to the room for a swift freshen-up. When we opened the door to our cell, sorry, room we saw our window - 8ft above our bed, the size of a letterbox and with a view of a brick wall. Undetered, we finally headed out into the 'dam.
We walked down Achterburgwal and smelled the funky, soapy smell of a nice bit of bud which tickled our nasal cavities - it was on. We needed to find smoke but unaccustomed to amsterdam we just wandered aimlessly looking for anything that resembled a coffeeshop. We saw a Bulldog but even the missus had heard of their tourist-trap rep. Finally, the missus spied a neon sign - COF EE SHOP (one of the F's was on the blink) and we wandered in, trembling with anticipation. The coffeeshop in question was The Bassment. I perused the menu, trying to look like a pro but the budtender instantly knew we were amsterdam virgins. Fair play to the fella, he spent a bit of time talking to me about how much I smoke at home, if I had any favourite tastes/strains etc etc. He needed to spend a fair bit of time chatting to me though because I could barely hear him above the music and needed him to repeat things numerous times. We settled on 2gr of NY Diesel and the dude sorted us some papers and roaches and a couple of fresh OJs. We parked our arses on a table next to some pretty fucked looking Italians and I got on with the job in hand. The combination of the excitement of being in amsterdam for the first time, rolling my first joint in amsterdam and being mega-tired from 3 months of a newborn baby conspired against me and I took to rolling the joint like a complete amateur. Finally after 20 minutes of trembling hands and spilled mix I raised the joint to my lips - fuck, it tasted good, but it also looked like a tampon - a fact not lost on our fucked Italian friends.
After we had left The Bassment we went for a couple of beers in a few bars and smoked a few more joints (rolled better this time) before the munchies kicked in with a vengeance. I asked the missus what she fancied - "anything" she replied, which was good because I didn't have a clue in which direction we'd find her food of choice. We found a rib & steak place somewhere (surprise, surprise) and went in. We didn't know what time it was and were told they were just about to close, so we turned on our heels. We turned a full 360 spin as the friendly manager told us they would make us something to eat if we wanted to sit down. A steak and a pasta dish later and we ask our host for the bill, he hands it over and I take some cash out of my wallet plus extra for a good tip. As we go to leave the manager shouts us over to come and have a drink on him with the rest of the restaurant staff. What a nice chap. A couple of pints swing our way and we chat with the manager who then brings out a bottle of sambuca and pours us a couple of big ones. Feeling tipsy and stoned we say our goodbyes and walk back toward the hotel. As we get changed for bed I look in my wallet to see what the cash situation is like. It is E20 light. It is then I realise that the E10 tip I had given the restauteur for our E40 dinner was in fact a E30 tip - damn you sticky Euro notes! - no wonder we had made ourselves a new friend! Another NYD spliff and the promise of not having to get up at the crack of dawn sent us into a deep, relaxing slumber.
The next day of our trip was to be a day of mostly wandering stoned around looking for tourist things to do while nipping into any coffeeshops we might see. We made a stop in the cannabis museum after hearing a friend say he got a bit of a vape bag when he went in there. I didn't get any vape. We found ourselves walking past GreenHouse Centrum and we dived in for a a couple more grams and some drinks to keep us going. I approached the dealers booth which had a couple of American tourists stood around. I waited for them to make a choice for absolutely ages when the dealer nodded me to make my order. I asked what the sweetest on the menu was (I do loves me a sweet, sweet draw) and he gave a non-plussed shrug and offered me a box to smell. It smelled good, a couple of grams of that (can't remember what it was) and a couple of grams of SSH were purchased. Off we went to sit down. Again, we had to share a table, this time with a heavy-eyed group of young men from the Midlands. The guy who was sat next to me was a non-smoker and he engaged me in conversation almost immediately. I got the gist that conversation was something that had been in short supply during his trip to amsterdam. A couple of the group decided they did have voice boxes and we had a nice little chat with these guys while we all passed joints around.
OJs finished, we headed off for a bit of museum hopping. On our way there we passed a couple of sex shows and the bouncers outside were trying to entice people in. We wobbled our way in the direction of the first bouncer when he jumps out in front of us. The missus jumps slightly (not me though, I'm a tough man! lol). "Hey, you wanna come into the suckiest, fuckiest filth-fest this side of amsterdam city?" enquires our gorrila suited assailant. "We're okay thanks" says the missus as I try to stop myself creasing up with laughter. Next door (another sex show), the bouncer calmly walks away from his post and stands in the middle of the street directly in front of us before fixing my gaze. He held it for an uncomfortably long (or so it seemed) amount of time before he told me in a thick Dutch accent that "Your wife, she needsh the shex". That is when I dropped to my knees (not like that you filthy bunch) and proceeded to laugh so hard that I thought I'd broken a rib. The bouncers from both doors gave us a jolly wave on our way and we continued our journey towards wherever it was we were going.
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur after that, and apart from the museums all I really remember is sitting in the pub next to our hotel, too battered to speak. Off to bed soon after.
Our next day was the day we were to leave and started bright and early with breakfast in the pub next to the hotel. A fairly poor selection, truth be told, was nonetheless ravenously devoured after a wake 'n' bake of a SSH/random/NYD spliff. We decide to go to Anne Frank's house and smoked a couple of joints as we walked for what seemed like hours. Finally there and we queued for what literally was hours. A fat American woman sat on my face as we walked up some steep steps. I'm not a fan of Anne Frank's house. As we walked back across town we found the Hard Rock cafe and decided to stop in for a bite to eat. Our food order took an hour and a half to arrive and the girl who served us looked like Jar Jar Binks and that is as memorable as our HRC experience got. We salvaged our day by getting a couple of grams of BlueBerry from Hill Street Blues on the Market and finding a piece of empty roadside next to a canal where we sat and whiled the afternoon away smoking spliffs in the sun as we waited to make the trip back home, stoned and very content.
Our second visit to Amsterdam occured in August of 2009 and this time we were with a couple of friends who were dating at that point. We decided to stay onboard a houseboat, a short bus-ride from the centre. We stepped out of the station and found our way to our houseboat - a fantastic old boat with an empty stretch of quayside next to it, in which we would swim daily. Jumping back onto the bus after meeting up with our landlord, we headed towards Haarlemmer Straat and Dampkring 2. A touch more au fait with coffeeshop protocol and we order a couple of grams of Laughing Buddha and a couple of grams of SSH and head upstairs for a drink and a smoke. Not having a grinder, I make my way back down to the bar and ask the 2 girls behind the bar if they had one I could borrow. They did - a GreenHouse branded one that they said I could keep. A couple of spliffs upstairs and we become acutely aware of just how disturbing the images on the TVs are in that place. Instead of staying we decide to roll a couple of joints for the walk to the Pancake Bakery on Prinsengracht. By now the SSH is hitting heavy and the walk seems like weeks and my knees feel like lead and I am aware that I have a little cold sweat on the inside of my palms. Not a minute too soon and we hit the Pancake Bakery. I become instantly engrossed in watching the thousands of flies which gleefully take dips into the huge pots of complimentary syrup. My pancake arrives and I instantly decide against a drizzle of the syrup. The tasty sweetness of the pancake and the cold of my Heineken soon have me feeling fit again and we finish up and head back towards Haarlemmer Straat. We decide to have an aperatif of an apple hookah at the Wonder Bar and are delighted to find the window pillows free for us to jump on. The barman expertly prepares our pipe and we all toke on the thick apple shisha smoke between puffs of spliffs and blunts which are also being passed around. A short bus ride later and we are back at our houseboat after a thoroughly enjoyable first afternoon in amsterdam.
Between us all it was decided that due to the fantastic weather and the fantastic accomodation (and a lack of cash) we'd have a relaxing trip and not do much other than sit around parks, canals and our houseboat smoking weed and drinking beer and wine and this is basically exactly what we did. As soon as I got up I skinned up a fat buddha spliff, chucked my headphones into my ears and took off to the nearest Albert Hein to stock up on brioche and strong coffee to rejuvenate us all. As I walked the canal, smoking my spliff and watching the locals getting on with starting their days I thought just how nice it'd be to be able to do this at home (legally - I still do this at home, just with stealth!). It's a plant FFS. A few locals nodded a hello and I reciprocated and before I knew it I was back on the boat getting the kettle on. After breakfast we all jumped into the quay and had a swim in the icy water. The barrel barbeque sat on the quayside piqued our interest and we all headed out of the water to go to town to pick up smoke and barbeque supplies. A stoned amble around amsterdam yielded everything we needed so we head over to Leidseplein to look at the statue people. After annoying them by pointing cameras and not cash at them we find a grassy area next to a canal with a solitary tree in it. The beating sun and hazy stonedness force us to climb over the mini railing that separated the canalside garden from the street and we park ourselves on our jackets and crack open a couple of less-cool-than-they-were-when-we-bought-them Heinekens and roll some more joints. A couple of hours fly by as we chat and smoke and drink so we blearily head back to our houseboat to attempt to light a barbeque. It lights first time without incident. We cook our meat to perfection and no-one has a bad 'dam experience. Our landlord comes over smoking a fat Blue-something spliff and offers to drive us into town if we want. Without plans to head central the missus' suggestion of a mint hookah and more spliffs in Wonder Bar has us jumping into the back of the landlords motor and speeding the short distance to Centraal Station where our host lets us out. Inside Wonder Bar we find the pillows in the window aren't free but there is enough room for us 4. Sat opposite us were 3 young guys from Dublin. 2 guys look like boy-band members and the other is attired more gothically than his counterparts. And he looks SICK. We had inadvertantly sat down in the middle of this dudes massive whitey. We begin talking to the 2 boy-band guys (lets call them the Jonas Bros). This is when we found out they were from Dublin. Unfortunately I was pissed and stoned and couldn't hear (I am a little bit deaf I think) where they were saying they were from and having the Jonas Bros in my head I assumed they had said Boston. This is where things went wrong for the goth guy who was having a whitey. If things weren't scary enough for him on his first night in amsterdam he was suddenly confronted with a pissed, stoned man asking him questions about American culture, food, drink etc while tooting on a hookah pipe like the Alice in Wonderland caterpillar. That is when he rolled out of the window onto the street and emptied his guts just outside the door to the establishment he was in not 5 seconds earlier. The Jonas Bros looked on in horror. The missus, ever the good samaritan, called the barman over and tried to tell him the tale. Unfortunately he either didn't hear or was uninterested because he looked at us and just closed the window on the ill goth kid. The missus jumped up, incredulous and gave the barman a piece of her mind. He apologised and took a glass of juice to the ill kid, gave his friends some advice and re-opend the window for us. Our little bit of drama kept us nicely entertained as we rode the bus back to our houseboat.
Day 3 opened with another trip to our local AH, more fresh brioche and coffee and another dip in the quay. We had planned to go and see some old windmills somewhere and needed to get a bus 45 minutes out of town to get there. We headed to Centraal Station and topped up our weed supplies with a few grams of King Hassan hash and some more Laughing Buddha. Our backpacks contained a picnic and plenty of beer and wine. We spent the bus journey to the windmills rolling hash and hash/bud joints. The windmills were good but we had planned a full day to be there and it could easily have been done in a couple of hours. We had a few hours to kill before the bus back so we went on a touristy boat trip down the river and listened to the not-very-amusing tour guide. Back on dry-land, bladders full we tried to find a toilet. The only toilets were pay toilets - cost a couple of Cents. So we all pay to relieve ourselves and head to a secluded area of the river to enjoy our spliffs and picnic and dip our toes into the waters. A couple of cans and a couple of spliffs later and I spy an elderly gent a couple of hundred yards to my left, wandering behind a windmill. A quick look around and the man pulls his pants and underpants right down to his ankles and proceeds to piss directly on this old windmill. We are all watching in amazement, not least because he is standing side-on to us and we can clearly see his wrinkly old arse and his greying cock and bollocks, but also because of all the open space behind the windmill, the old man thought ON the windmill would be the best place to piss. After pulling his pants up he nonchalantly walked back around the windmill to rejoin his tour group and we packed our picnic away and headed towards our bus. We arrived back in central amsterdam with nothing planned to do so we all headed to a smart shop to get some truffles and an AH to get some dinner. We got home and we got HIGH. Then we went to bed, still tripping balls.
On our last day in amsterdam we didn't have to be off our houseboat before our plane left so we spent most of the morning lazing around, smoking weed and packing up. As mentioned, the quay was such a great place to take a swim, so before we left the houseboat to head into the centre we decide on one last dip. My friend, D's swimming shorts were also his traveling home shorts as they were the cleanest he had left, so he was reluctant to get in. Cajoled by the three of us already in the water he finally relented and whipped his top, shoes and socks off before dramatically diving into the freezing cold water. And he stayed under for a while. And a little longer. "SHIT!" he shouted as he finally popped his head out of the water. "WTF?" we all reply. Turns out that when he dived in, he realised his camera was in his pocket and it subsequently fell out of the pocket underwater. Somehow he had carried on down into the water chasing it in his dive and had almost got it as he thought he might have grabbed the strap as it sunk into the abyss but he emerged camera-less. For all of the photo's from this trip you'd have to go looking on the bottom of the Ij. Dried off, we head into town and do some last minute souvenir shopping before leaving Centraal Station for Schipol Airport. 2 hours later we are back home but still amsterdam stoned.
Ffor me amsterdam is the maddest place on the planet. I have had 2 very different trips to amsterdam and seen very different sights each time. I hope my next trip will be as eventful (of which I am sure). Sorry about the lack of weed detail but for me amsterdam is a lot more than just weed, weed just enhances amsterdam.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it
