My Trip to Amsterdam

Inspired by one of the many threads about Amsterdam here I thought I'd throw up a travelogue I wrote for another forum after my first smoking trip there last year. There's pictures (forgive the ones of weed for being in baggies and the mismatched sizes...) and there's also just shit that a fellow blade might find helpful to know if planning a visit.

Enjoy!

Day 0, 20th August 2009

Nope, not a typo. I definitely need to explain what went down on this day. After picking up our A level results we went for a drink… starting at about midday. Numerous drinks later we headed home at about midnight, so 12 hours of drinking, including 3 hours at a cocktail bar. You can imagine how we felt when we realised that the amount of drinking that had happened, followed by about 3 hours sleep was not gonna have us set up well for a 6.45am flight.

Day 1, 21st August 2009

Waking up at 4.30am felt like death after the events of the night before. One of my friends had stayed over that night and with our lack of sleep we piled into the car that my dad had offered to drive to the airport and headed to pick up our last friend. After the short trip to the airport check in and the flight were pretty much uneventful.

And so we hit the floor at Schipol with a spring in our step. Walk. Tickets. Train. The look on my mates faces as we all walked out of Centraal station into the sun of Amsterdam was great; “finally we're here”. At this point perhaps I should explain that I've in fact been to A'dam before but no smoking took place, so I treated this effectively as my virgin trip. Indeed I was struck by the obvious beauty of the place, but perhaps not as much as the others as I'd been before.

Dodging all the trams, bikes, buses, mopeds, cars, lorries and in fact virtually anything with wheels was certainly an interesting experience when we were all still half asleep from the night before. Walking down the Damrak I was amazed at how empty it seemed, until I remembered it was still only just past 10 in the morning. We walked via Dam square and Damstraat to Oude Hoogstraat where our accommodation place was located. We couldn't get in the room yet so went back out and grabbed something to eat quickly.



Some cool artwork in the place we were staying and a couple of the slightly ghetto provided bongs.

Then on to our first coffeeshop. We had hoped to experience Basjoe but as we walked down to it we saw that it was still shut, so we turned on our heels and headed back up towards the Nieuwmarkt and The Green Place. Our first coffeeshop! I have to say, it is certainly a unique experience; buying something you'd usually consider illegal over the counter in such a friendly environment. Here we decided on 1g of Silver Haze at €12/g and 2g of Amnesia Haze also at €12/g. We liked the look and feel of this place, nice variety on the menu and a good selection of drinks, which all seemed to be €2, a fair price. Perhaps a bit dingy inside, but looked as if there were enough seats which all looked comfortable and it was spacious and airy enough. The weather was fantastic so we sat outside and smoked a spliff of both the hazes. The silver haze smelt very fruity and tasted just as good, followed by the Amnesia haze which had a classic hazey smell and very piney taste when smoked; lovely. We sat down for a while here and enjoyed the passing of Amsterdam life and our view over the Nieuwmarkt while we experienced a nice clear high from the weed.


Silver Haze, The Green Place

After sitting in here for a while we phoned up our other mates and decided to meet up at the Bulldog energy coffeeshop as they were in the Bulldog hostel just next door. It should be noted that from now onwards we probably bought more weed than I can remember, so all I list is probably not all we smoked (hard to keep track when there's 6 buying!) We didn't buy anything other than drinks in here but sat down and listened to the repetitive trance type music which got old quite quickly so we didn't spend ages in here. The seats weren't too comfortable and it's not hard to see how this place got its label as a bit of a tourist trap.

We split and headed to our place for a few spliffs while our other mates showered. After we were nice and baked again we decided to go for a walk… to Vondelpark. This took ages and we must've gone such a strange way, in the future I would certainly just get the tram if I'm honest. However, on the way we did find Mellow Yellow. I was so happy to stumble across this of all coffeeshops, we walked in and hit a major stumbling block; us getting ID'd and one of us not having any (forgot it, doh!) so he had to leave while the rest of us sorted ourselves with weed for the park. Here we bought 1g of S5 Haze at €14/g and 1g of Chocolope at €14/g plus a couple of grams of other stuff that I didn't write down. We smoked up a few spliffs in here, had a drink and hit quite a few bags from the Volcano upstairs. I liked it in here, cool, airy, comfortable and bright. The S5 haze was a nice haze, had a good taste and nice high, but for that much I'd probably expect something a bit more special. The Chocolope was also nice, smelt sublime and smoked very well, just generally a nice smoke.



The Rijksmuseum at the Museumplein

After our time here we had to leave more prematurely than we would have normally as our mate had been waiting outside all that time. We continued on our walk down towards Vondelpark but first stumbled on the Museumplein and just thought feck it, sit down on the grass behind the Van Gogh museum. Rather quickly however we decided that despite how sunny it was it was too damn windy to roll and we'd already smoked all our spliffs so we decided to search out another coffeeshop.



The Van Gogh Museum and the Museumplein

After a bit of a walk from the Museumplein we ended up at Dolphins coffeeshop. Another IDing and my mate called it quits and started the walk back to get his ID. The rest of us stayed here, got a booth downstairs and some drinks, averaging about €2.40 a drink. Here the menu was posted on the wall and all the weed and hash was pre-bagged in little grease-proof paper baggies. We bought 1g Royal Dolphin maroc at €10/g, 1.5g Jamaican for €10 and 3g Northern Lights at €10/g. It was comfy as hell here and we got a bong for a €10 deposit and smoked up quite a bit. Can't say that the Jamaican or NL were really good or bad, just pretty normal filler weeds really. The Royal Dolphin was nice though, a nice sweet smelling, softish dark hash which smoked well either in a bong or a spliff to give a very strong body stone with seemingly heightened senses, especially auditory.

After this we strolled back up towards Dam square and grabbed some food from somewhere along the way, too stoned to remember where or what and onto Basjoe. This time it was open as it was now approaching about 7 in the evening. Here we bought 1g Jamaican at €4/g, 1g Orange Bud at €7/g, 3g Cheese at €12/g plus I'm sure someone bought a couple of grams of the Bas Special. Smoked up quite a few joints outside and enjoyed the view, again just enjoying watching people pass by about their business. The sad thing here is how much Basjoe didn't live up to my expectations. I suppose the first thing that put a downer on it for me was how we were asked for ID, not really rudely but hardly in the most polite of manners when we had done nothing but be pleasant. The interior of the shop didn't seem like anything special but the weed was of a fairly high standard and sitting outside the shop was most pleasant. The cheese and orange bud were very nice smokes, tasty, pongy and very attractive weed. Again, the Jamaican was standard filler. This smoke knocked us out however so we staggered back round the corner to our place and crashed out for a few hours.


Orange Bud, Basjoe





The view from the window of our accomodation. Yes we were above a coffeshop

That evening we went out again about 11 after several spliffs and multiple bongs back at our place and marvelled at the surroundings of Dam square, Damstraat and the lower end of the RLD (not many windows), grabbed some food and drinks for the night and headed back to our place to smoke what was left from day 1…

Day 2 and more to come.

 

Day 2, 22nd August 2009

Felt quite lethargic after the (failed) attempt the night before to smoke up everything that everyone had left from the day. Getting up at 9 didn't happen as we had planned, managed about 10. Spliff, shower, bong, in that order; god I love Amsterdam! It didn't take us long to finish off the job of the night before and so we headed out about 11.30 feeling very dazed from our early morning efforts.



House boats in Amsterdam. Stayed in one the first time I came with the parents. Really unique thing to stay in since they only allow a limited number within the city.

So we walked down Damstraat again and headed out to Grey Area for the 12 o'clock opening, actually getting there a little early in the end. I needed some money so we headed back towards Dam square to get some cash (that's one thing I did notice about Amsterdam: there only seems to be about 15 cash points in the whole centrum) and of course, sods law, when we got back to Grey Area at 12.15 all the seats were full. Despite this we decided to buy and fly as we had heard so much about Grey Area weed and so we got 1g of Yellow Cab at €7.50/g and 2g of Grey Haze at €11.50/g. I'll elaborate on the actual coffeeshop later as we did indeed return.



The Anne Frank Museum. The house she famously hid from the Nazi's in during WW2 is there.

After the disappointment of just missing getting a seat in Grey Area we decided to head round the corner to Amnesia as I knew how close it was. Walking in we were instantly surprised, definitely seemed like more of a high class place, nicely laid out, plenty of seating inside and out, just felt pleasant in here. We bought 1g Laughing Buddha at €12/g and 1g G13 Haze at €13/g. I also borrowed a nice clean GonG bong for a €20 deposit. We smoked quite a lot here, also smoking up the stuff we had bought in Grey Area. The Yellow Cab proved to be a good smoke, nice flavour, good stone and nice looking buds; a good bargain at that price! The Grey Haze was great, again a really fruity, hazey smell, nice big buds and lovely and crystally looking. Proved to be just as nice when smoked, tasted great and a strong high that left me thoroughly appreciating my surroundings. The weed from Amnesia was also good, I stuck to the G13 Haze to maintain my hazey high. Another nice weed, smoked well, tasted good and intensified the high from the Grey Haze. The Laughing Buddah was a nice smoke also, tasted good but more of a stone really and didn't get any of us giggling like some people have reported. Another thing that really impressed us about this place was the food and drink menu, we sampled mango and chocolate milkshakes and the cheese and cheese & ham toasties as well, all really good and reasonably priced.


G13 Haze, Amnesia

After our stint in Amnesia we decided to head back up to our place and smoke what was left from the first purchases. After smoking a lot of this it was time again to head out and meet our friends at the Bulldog, where we grabbed a few beers at the bar. After meeting them we strolled around almost randomly until we reached the 420 café and decided to head in to get some drinks and weed. Here we bought 1g of Neville's Haze at €13/g, 1g of 420 Kush at €12/g, 1g of Blueberry at €10/g and 1g of White Widow at €10/g. I remember the Neville's Haze being a very very nice smoke, if I'm honest this kinda blew me away. Floaty, chatty and a lovely high. Contender for best weed for sure. Can't remember the rest I'm afraid!


Neville's Haze, 420 café


420 Kush, 420 café

I know after this we headed out for a look round the RLD and we were all pretty much amazed at a lot of the talent on display but none of us had the money or willingness to get involved. Maybe some beers somewhere then we crashed out after I smoked some of the 420 Kush, which I remember knocking me out for the count. This was the night where 2 of us slept in our clothes, on top of our covers, with the TV on. We were pretty messed up really.

More to come...

 

Bump.

Not much lovin up in here... bother with the rest?

 

Strive for it man. It's worth the visit. Save up some money and come and travel around Europe for a while taking in the sights. Trust me, you would not regret it.

Cool, might as well throw the rest up. There's only a little bit of editing in each section.

I didn't go in this trip but I'd been before.

It is a bit strange but not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Obviously it would've been pretty rough having no running water, never being able to leave, having 3 rooms for 3 families, making no noise during working hours (above a factory) etc etc. But the actual building wasn't like falling down or anything.

The Dutch in general are very proud of their resistance efforts during WW2 and also quite how many Jews were hidden just through sheer compassion. There were thousands of others just like Anne Frank.

As for the water; it hasn't smelt any of the times I've been (February, August, November) so I guess it's alright most the time. I mean, a lot of it's connected to either the sea or rivers so I guess it isn't as stagnant as many waterways in cities... either way I've never noticed it as an issue.

 

Day 3, 23rd August 2009

We managed to get up at a reasonable time on this day, just after 9 I think. Smoked hard at our place again when we woke up because we couldn't get through to our mates to meet up and hit a coffeeshop. Went out and grabbed some food from one of the numerous little bakeries for breakfast, back to the room, smoke, shower etc. By this point I was virtually out of weed so needed to head out quick sharp and get something; soberness was beginning to rear its ugly head.

The obvious choice due to the time at this point was to head back to Grey Area for opening and perhaps even get a seat. And this we did, getting there for opening my mates pounced on the window table while I went up to get drinks and bud (it truly is amazing how quickly this place fills up, I'd say it was full including a big queue within 5 minutes of opening). I also opted to check out one of their bongs, nice friendly budtender merely replied “it's free to you my friend” when I tried to give a deposit of some sort for the RooR little sista that he handed me, good service. This time we only bought 1g of East Coast Sour Diesel at €12/g. Nice weed this, definitely can taste the name as it where, although grapefruity as well? The only thing for me that put a downer on Grey Area was the state of the bong… diiiiirty! This thing looked like it had never been cleaned since bought; bit of a shame when one the same would set you back about £120 or thereabouts in the UK. So we smoked up in here until we were all nice and mellow again, my 2 mates finishing off most of their stashes if I remember rightly.


East Coast Sour Diesel, Grey Area

After Grey Area we needed food, a lot… us walking towards Dam square would've been reminiscent of a scene from any zombie movie. I think we grabbed a New York Pizza at this time: great food, fairly reasonably priced. Now I'm a pretty big guy but 2 slices of this pizza filled me up! I think that set me back about €6. Recommended. After this it was back to the recurring theme, back to the room to wait for our other mates to be ready.



More canal...

This time they weren't that bad so we met up with them and headed out. We had decided to go up to Haarlamerstraat and check out a few of the coffeeshops up that end of town. After some rather strange directional choices on the part of me and a couple of the others we actually ended up right outside Anyday… that's okay by me! Strolling in here we noticed that all the seats were taken, inside and out but we decided to buy and fly anyway, we could always sit by a canal and smoke up because the weather was great yet again. Here we bought 1g of Honey Dew at €13/g, 1g of Choco at €12/g, 3g of Anyday Special at €12/g and 1g of Blue Haze at €11/g. Like I said we didn't stick around here but it was a nice place, certainly somewhere I'd return to. Big windows, nice and airy but few seats… is there an upstairs here? I seem to remember some stairs but in our dazed state we didn't think to go up them.


Choco, Anyday


Honey Dew, Anyday

After that we walked down whatever street Anyday is on until we came across Doors… a rather strange place to say the least. It was completely empty, a bit tatty and dark but it had the best air conditioning we'd experienced thus far (the Dutch really don't seem big on air con, some places were intolerable due to the heat… it was hot but only about 25⁰c outside). We decided to stick around here and wandered up to the bar, I say this because it was a bar; they had alcoholic drinks yet the bartender was also selling weed at the end. I think this was a bit sketchy, as the menu looked battered and he was dealing out of a bag, me thinks no licence. But whatever, we bought drinks and my mates bought 3g of Power Plant at €10/g. We went upstairs and were greeted by 2 pool tables… this was the moment we decided to stick around here a while. Multiple beers, spliffs and games of pools later we were content and decided to head back out into the sun. Sorry I can't comment on the Power Plant, I either didn't smoke it or can't remember it at all; although my friend did say it was the best weed he smoked all trip and another said it was up there, so it must've been pretty decent.

After more of a walk we finally saw the sign we wanted to: Haarlamerstraat. We walked down here a bit, spotting Picasso, Dampkring 2 and Popeye before my mates decided they of course wanted to try Barney's. I didn't really have an aversion to this, as I've never been before so I knew I should probably check it out despite how commercial and overpriced a lot of people on here say it is. We went in here and grabbed a table, nice comfy chairs, airy, reasonably sized, well decorated and friendly bud tenders although the weed prices were indeed a bit steep. Not as bad as many people make out though, in fact it was a rather pleasant place to be. Here we bought 1g of Hawaiian Snow at €13/g and 1g of Red Dragon at €13/g. Both nice smokes, one mate saying the Hawaiian was the best weed of the trip. It was while we were in here that we realised this was to be our last night in Amsterdam. Bad times.


Red Dragon, Barney's

We decided to go out with a bang and headed back to the Bulldog bar (again) to smoke as much of what we had left as we could and take advantage of their 10 Jägermeister shots for €10. We either bought 30 or 40… I can't really remember, hardly surprising to be honest! After this we went around the RLD again for quite a while, gawping at a lot of the women (some really are amazing) and I'm sure we got a beer somewhere.


Jäger Shots, Bulldog Bar


War memorial in Dam square at night.


View down Damrak.

After a while of this it was getting on a bit so we decided to split and head back to our separate places to smoke up and sleep in preparation for our last day in Amsterdam. By this point we still had quite a lot to smoke, as we wanted to finish off a lot of what we had so we didn't have to kill ourselves on the last day. You can see the task that followed…




Last day to come...

 

Probably dude. I was smoking mostly Sativas though tbh, as we only really get Indicas around here (since we grow like 98% of our bud indoors) so I wanted a change.

As you can tell as well, the colours don't come out at all well since I was retarded enough to take the pictures with them in the baggies... retarded or just high. Probably the latter.

The variation is just insane really... there's like 50 coffeeshops in Amsterdam or something, each one probably (on average) sells about 7 strains of weed. So, counting for duplications, we're talking like 250 strains or some shit. Basically if a seed bank has created it, a coffeeshop sells it (and since many seedbanks are based in Amsterdam... virtually all strains are available).

 

Flights ~ £80
Accommodation ~ £25 a night
Food budget ~ £20-£30 a day
Weed budget ~ £40 a day

In total that trip cost me about £450ish. Couple of the dudes I went with did it for about £380 or something though, but I had a better time .

Deffo do it dude. Sometimes flights are like £15 return if you find the deals. That's cheaper than getting to London for me... I'd probably do it as a day trip tbh if I couldn't go longer, it's only a 45 minute flight.

 

Well, I kinda assumed it was Indica/Indica dominant because of the high I get off it and the strain names attached (almost always indicas). Skunk is kinda just the generic name for high strength cannabis these days in Britain, even though it is actually a strain in it's own right anyway.

As for pics in coffeeshops... nah, not really. Didn't get that many pics in general really, my cameras pretty bad so I don't bother with it much. Some coffeeshops are also a bit weird about taking pictures inside for some reason... oh, and the photos I do have have got peoples faces in, so they're not getting posted!

 

Day 4, 24th August 2009

So, our last day in Amsterdam was upon us. We had a flight to catch at about 6 in the evening so we wanted to get as much into the few hours we had left as possible… this plan hit a big stumbling block when we realised that we all had to do an online check in for our flight and also somehow print off the boarding cards. Sorting this out through the use of several different computers and with the help of the reception staff at the Bulldog printing the things we finally got it sorted by about midday. This only left us roughly 4 hours until we had to catch a train to Schipol. We decided we were super tired, a bit hungover and couldn't be arsed to walk far never mind to a coffeeshop we didn't know so after grabbing a bite to eat in the Bulldog bar we headed out in the general direction of Grey Area and Amnesia.





Couple of random pics of where we stayed.

We decided to walk past Grey Area on the miniscule off chance that there were enough seats for the 6 of us, and also the 3 who were staying at the Bulldog hadn't been yet so wanted to at least have a look at the place. As we got outside, as expected, the place was packed and had a long queue: scrap that. We all decided to simply wrap up our trip at Amnesia, it was easy, convenient for getting the train and also a very pleasant place to be. Being that it was our last day we weren't gonna be buying a significant quantity of anything, all that was purchased was 1g of Quasar at €17/g, our most expensive weed of the trip. The thing is it didn't taste like it, yes it was good, very good, but not worth the extra €4/g or so that it was over the other weeds that I actually preferred. We got a bong here again, a very clean GonG piece like the first time we had visited. Smoking up in here we all helped each other finish off the various bits and bobs we had left in several salad spliffs, all most pleasant, also ending up giving a very nice complete high because of all the different weeds. It was at this point that one of us decided it would be appropriate to point out to us that he had about 3.5g of stuff left; and we had to leave to get the train in about an hour (we had eaten further at Amnesia). Luckily for us someone in the group had a blunt wrap ready and waiting to be rolled… all the remaining weed was hastily jammed into this and we went outside and grabbed a table to smoke up the very last Amsterdam weed in big style with a big blunt…

As expected the rest of the trip was most boring: walk, tickets, train, walk, security, duty-free, plane, home. I can't even begin to elaborate on how much of a good time we all had, hopefully by reading the report you got a rough idea. Amsterdam is a beautiful, diverse and interesting city; definitely one of my favourites in the world (I've travelled extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia and America: visited San Francisco, New York, Paris, Brouges… and more) and I can say with certainty that I will be back. Probably sooner rather than later. 4/20 2011 anyone?

 

Summary

I love Amsterdam. In all seriousness though, if I didn't have to learn another language I would consider moving there in a heartbeat (I'm awful with languages, trust me, technically I'm multilingual if you go by GCSE results…) and I make this judgement having only visited twice. This summary should wrap up the trip report, but will not even get close to expressing what an amazing place it is, and what a time we had…

Number of Coffeeshops visited: 11

Number of strains smoked: 25+

Amount spent on weed: €400+

Number of hours in Amsterdam: 80

Top 5 Strains:

1.\tNeville's Haze – Café 420
2.\tGrey Haze – Grey Area
3.\tHawaiian Snow – Barney's
4.\tYellow Cab – Grey Area
5.\tG13 Haze – Amnesia

Top 5 shops:

1.\tAmnesia
2.\tMellow Yellow
3.\tGrey Area
4.\tCafé 420
5.\tGreen Place

Best place for vaporisers: Anyday (this was obvious even if we didn't stick around)

Best bong: Amnesia

Best (coffeeshop) food: Amnesia

Most reasonable: Doors

Last couple of pics:



Attempting arty shot of tram going back. Fail.



My stash one night.



Out of focus view down the street.



Random shot at night...


Hope ya enjoyed it/it helped.

Any further questions about Amsterdam, do fire away!