Day 1:
Saturday 31st July 2010
I'd headed round to my friend N's place the night before to crash with him and his brother A before we went to catch our flight the next day. I woke up pretty early, around 0730 feeling pretty damn excited about what lay ahead, this being my first time going to Amsterdam. Everyone else must have felt the same as they were all up pretty soon after me. A asked me to help him cut his hair into a Mohawk for the upcoming metal festival which I found highly amusing as it was a bit of amateurish due to him being a bit overzealous and starting one side himself. I did my best but alas my best on the other side was a bit shit and I couldn't match it up. He was cool with it though so we didn't have to throw down there and then over who screwed up. Anyway I was getting a paranoid by this point about the flight so fired up the pc to check the airport website but my anxiety subsided when I saw everything was on time.
When we travelled over to the airport we were crammed into N's girlfriends car which made me laugh pretty much all the way there thinking about what people on the outside were looking at. So we said our goodbyes and got inside but being a touch early there was no check-in desk open for our flight giving N and A the opportunity to head for Euros. After using my secret powers of politeness asking an attendant if our stuff was in the way I was informed that there was a queue starting and asked what flight I was on. After hearing my flight number the attendant informed me that this was actually the queue I should be in making us third to be checked-in so we were through really quickly. However A and myself managed to stall us when we got checked before getting to our gate as he had items flagged in our hand luggage. So we're pulled over to the side and our bags are opened, my item is a plastic case which I was using to store some cards so I was waved through and A's was a bit different being an bullet belt for the festival. It must have been five minutes of N and I laughing at him while he was told off then sent away to try and check it in at the check-in desk. We still tear into him about it and probably will till we die. After that debacle everything else went smoothly with our plane taking off on time and landing at 1515 (local time), our bags were out reasonably quickly at the other side and we were off for a train as quickly as we could walk. This is where we had another bit of a failure taking the wrong train and incurring charges but we sorted it out as a misunderstanding which let us dodge a large portion of the fine.
When we finally rolled into Centraal we headed off to meet up with the other two who were joining us, M and R who looked like they'd been sampling some of the city's wares already due to their red eyes and massive grins plastered across their faces. They had gotten into the city just as the coffeeshops opened in the morning so fair play. After a quick call to the Damcity apartments we scooted on over to see the apartment. They really weren't joking about the stairs either and doing them in the dark made it a bit more interesting. The apartment was great and had everything I expected but we had to wait until it was finished as we'd arrived slightly early so we played a few games of magic, got the money and deposit sorted, then dumped our gear and headed for a coffeeshop.
(Loved the view from the apartment)
The Damcity guy also gave us a quick overview of the surrounding area as well as the coffeeshops in the centre of the city, I however had my eye on one place after diligently reading about most of the coffeeshops so we made our way towards Dampkring. When we got there and I hit the bud table I was still in a bit of a daze not really believing where I was until my concentration was broken by the bud tender. The place was busy so I snapped out of it and had a look at the hashes on the menu. I asked the bud tenders opinion and after a wee chat he showed me some of the hashes I might like until I arrived at my decision and purchased some Manali Cream(1gram €16) which I enjoyed immensely, it actually lasted pretty much the whole holiday which was cool.
It was really soft stuff and broke apart with barely a touch. The place was busy and it was late so we went back to the apartment to rest and smoke before hitting our scratchers. From what I’ve written it hit me pretty hard with the high sort of rushing up on me, I usually smoke a small bong and the one I used was a bit bigger so that's probably added to it.
