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For some of you the following may be a very well know dilemma: What to tell certain members of your family, friends or maybe professional associates about your latest holiday blast to AMS?

“We go for the museums and culture!” are probably some of the more worn out “excuses”. “We go for the food” could also be one, although those in the know may bust you here, as AMS is far from the #1 pick for a culinary destination in Europe and there are other warmer and cheaper places to go.

Although we do not exclusively spend our time in AMS in CSs and doing smoking related stuff (at least not for the last few of our trips), this does take up a very sizeable chunk out of our time whilst visiting. So a few trips back we came up with a brilliant scheme to address the issue. At least that is what we thought in our, perhaps, somewhat inebriated state having some good tokes and planning for the upcoming trip. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and stoners…

The plan was as follows: Buy one dedicated disposable cam (this was before digital cameras were cheap enough to take on such a stoner’s trip, forget camera phones), spend half a day walking around to the major sights and get pictures of them (and a few of us there). One full week of holiday pictures in half a day, check! and almost a full weeks “time off” for having fun, check!

Cut to the third or fourth day into our trip and we remember our brilliant plan. Time for an update, half a day is way too long to spend hoofing it around snapping pictures of sights when you don’t even get to see any of them properly (lame ass lazy smoker’s excuse yellow alert going off here!). How about we just take trams around to the sights that are nearest good CSs and snap pictures of these? Plan = updated!
But wait, now we have to plan further because we almost never go by tram, so it is a bit of route planning, looking at the ACS map for clues where to go…
“Hey, let’s walk down to ‘t Nes and have a little toke and finish the plan!” “Great idea, let’s go!”.

So we are off to Nes, planning along the way. As we walk over dam square we spot the bike-taxis sitting there and as soon as we hit Nes we instantly agree that our plan is in dire need of an update! It is much faster, we agree, to take a bike-taxi around to the different sites and these guys must know where the sights are (smokers that sees opportunities for tokin enroute and being able to b&f if they spot a good CS red alert blaring like crazy here!).

So we skin up a few for the first leg and, toke up (you know for the really long walk from Nes to the square) and hit the street. We spot a dude that looks friendly and approach him for a little negotiation. We quickly agree on a deal that seemed more than fair to us, but of course slide in the “tokin allowed at all times” clause in our verbal contract.
We are off, and the first sight is, obviously, tweede kammer, because as Mr. CC put it “you can’t go on a fake bike-taxi sightseeing tour without some good ice to go along, there are rules!”.

Mr. CC dashes into 2e and the bt is quick to recommend the waterworks and dutch moonshine (Mr. CC might have “accidentally” asked for some powerful stuff). A g of each richer we are off to see the first of the sights.

Traveling along with this guy on the pedals turns out to be a great ride, he spoke several languages (could pick up a word or two here and there of or chitchatting in Danish), but seemed only to use English for anything else than his rather special way of reminding other cyclist, car drivers and especially pedestrians that he had the right of way (even though he most of the time did not). He would swear and cuz at them like an angry old sailor in whatever of the five or six languages he apparently mastered and found to be most appropriate for whomever he was chewing up verbally. As soon as they showed any hint of giving way, though, he was the nicest of fellows and would follow up on his ramblings with at least one “danku well” and “thanks”.

We found the antics and personality of our driver very entertaining and besides his chewing up random people he was very knowledgeable about different sights and the dutch / AMS culture in general. He even shared a few puffs on one of the spliffs (containing waterworks, and a lot of it) but quickly declared that it was probably not “a biking sort of smoke” we were having us and passed on the next many offers.

Now, the funny guide and heavy toking combined did wonders for the entertainment of the whole ordeal, but it also impaired our already dulled judgment enough for us to agree that it was perfectly fine snapping most of the pictures on the fly. We planned only to get off for those that desperately needed our presence (which we agreed could not reasonably be expected to be more than two or three) or that were hidden from direct view from the street. Great idea, more sights and more time for smoking then!

So we are blazing through AMS (in more ways than one), but agree after the Night’s Watch that we had enough of this getting off and back on the bike ride (it being the first one where we were not required to be in but was out of the way). We end up having a great time and snap very good (and several) pics of at least 10 spots around the city. Mission accomplished and CopenhagenCouple is off to get lost again.

Cut to at least six years later and CC are going through some old stuff preparing for a move when we find a bag of old disposable cameras, all exposed. Not even knowing if they were still any good we turn them in and have a great laugh at some of the picture of us sitting in CSs and having fun over a period of several trips.

One set of pictures puzzle us though. The first ten or so pictures are not recognizable as anything other than a blur of motion or some orange / fleshy colored thing.
About ten or twelve pictures in the other shoe drops as we find a picture of a very, very stoned looking Mrs. CC standing in front of a fountain that our bike guide convinced us (before we got there) was the only waterfall in AMS, smiling gleefully at the genius of our secret plan to fool everyone with our stealth photo mission...

CopenhagenCouple

I live in a state that blames everything on, "that marijuana." Kids are overdosing on prescription pills . . . it is marijuana's fault. Traffic lights do not work properly . . . blame marijuana. In one Board meeting, someone likened crystal meth to marijuana.

Rest assured that the state of Texas will be the very last state to ever accept marijuana in any form or fashion, medical or recreation.

I am fairly sensitive to trips to AMS due to where I reside.

I really try to go to AMS every year. I go, and people here know I go. I do enjoy the culture, and if I ever sat for a lie detector test, I would pass with flying colors by stating that I go to AMS to visit the museums. I also like the food and you cannot get a better Heineken anywhere on the planet. Walking the streets is so amazing. I love every bit of the visit from sitting along the canal to listening to the church bells. You very well may be tired of reading by this point. The person who asked me about AMS is also tired of listening, so they lose interest. I can literally speak for hours on end about non-vice AMS.

Anyone that asks me about AMS was expecting me to go on and on about the RLD, Coffeeshops, etc. Every now and again someone will ask about the RLD or a CS, and I tell them that the RLD is really a destination area. To visit, you must make it a point to go through the de wallen RLD. What I call the Singel RLD is a different story, but most people who have never been to AMS do not know there are three distinct RLDs. Then if they are pressing, I will provide some relative geographical areas, like the RLD is akin to one area of a big town in which I reside. Usually by this point, the person asking has lost all interest b/c they just found out that AMS is not one big town consisting of 100% RLD, there is not a CS on every street corner, and it has a lot of cultural museums and history.

I do love the conversations mostly because I get a big kick out of an otherwise highly intelligent and well educated person asking me the dumbest, stupidest, stereotypical questions about AMS. Living in the Bible Belt of the US, most people have some vague belief that AMS is the site of all things debaucherous, and when you inform them otherwise, that knowledge is confusing and makes them feel dumb enough to not pry any further.

What I find very, very sad is that there are a LOT of people in this area of the US who smoke, but think AMS is full of crime and you are risking your life to visit. That mis-belief is incredibly sad. I find that I cannot literally pay people to go visit AMS with me, as in "I am paying for the flight and a houseboat, who would like to go?" Crickets chirping. My closest friend informed me yesterday that (1) his wife does not believe that AMS is safe; and (2) with terrorism on the upswing in Europe, anyone travelling to Europe is risking his life. Sad, sad, sad.

Great topic, CC!

Robyn, my wife, and I went to Amsterdam the first time to "Smoke" but stayed for the culture, people, architecture, and the museum's. Been back many times, one of our favorite museums is the "Church in the Attic" to us it represents Dutch Tolerance another favorite is the "Bag and Purse" museum, at first I thought I would be bored I was wrong it is worth the visit We can go on and on about Amsterdam and The Netherlands and never mention the RLD or the Coffee Shops on a lighter note, on one of our trips with 14 friends, we went to a Coffee Shop and I was the only one to have coffee

I normally have a little routine of just a small wake and bake in the am , do some culteral thigns in the morning (typically a museum or church) - lunch , spend the afternoon riding around on the trains to somewhere new (I get one free rail pass a year) - typically the Hague or Aalkar etc - then reserve the evening for dinner and a "good smoke" ........

Funny how living in the UK and I have to rely on charity through friends for the odd smoke (though had some very nice Polem gifted - and had that laast evening and today !) - once in AMS , tend not to go mad and almost take it for granted

Too much daytime smoking just makes me idle....time to plan an Autumn visit when the summer rush is over. .....