‘I’ll have the AK47 please. And two cappucinos’.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this was some sort of relaxed
arms deal. But nothing was blown away in this transaction. Apart from perhaps our minds.
This opening exchange went down in the first of many visits to various cafés in Amsterdam. Oh yes. After plenty of talk, action had taken place and we’d made it across the sea to the Dutch home of nefarious behaviour. As such the middle of day one on our recent jaunt seemed as apt a time as any to start chonging on the good shit - we spent the next 36
hours cackling like hysterical, red-eyed hyenas.
Our trip had begun the previous evening via an overnight ferry
to take advantage of the first bank holiday of the year. And the tone had been already set by getting extremely carried away by the wonderful attraction of a smoking room on the boat. Despite this small, foggy oasis seeming to be full of chain
smoking children, we sat back and supped on lagers and smokes until the bar keep had to shut up shop and usher us to bed.
Unsurprisingly, our first morning was one born of much confusion.
Woken up by the ship’s alarm call of ‘Don’t Worry - Be Happy’ at what felt like
an early hour, we’d rushed down to breakfast almost too late to eat owt. We
made the most of the five minutes given to us by making a heap of bacon
butties, tying them up in serviettes and legging it off the boat just in time
to catch the train to the ‘dam.
Our stay was to the west of the city in the apartment of a
camp, muscly dude called Anthony who’d I found on the internet. His apartment
was lovely with a walk in shower thing and plenty of cruising ground flyers but we barely spent any time in there apart from to kip. The
vertigo-inducing, anorexic flight of stairs which he bounded down to greet us
when we arrived added an extra frisson of danger to our two days of going
Dutch.
Our wee stay involved a relaxing routine of walking up to
Anne Frank’s house and looking on the queue in aghast, then hitting up a coffee
joint for a sugary hit of caffeine and massive bifter. When the smoke got too
pungent, we’d level out with a refreshing lager and a bacon butty we’d nabbed from the boat. And so the routine for our stay was set. One of the realest moments was seeing a fellow elderly
toker finish a particularly stinky reefer, then make off really slowly on a
mobility scooter. Vibes to that old man.
We were in bed by ten on the Saturday due to being overly baked
but got up the next day to take bikes round Vondelpark at a very pedestrian
pace, then hit up the café scene for more vibes, this time in the sleazy heart
of the Red Light District. It's undoubtedly a pretty weird place. Liberating,
otherworldly, bleak, shocking take your pick. But going for a mooch round there baked is probably
wise. Then hitting up Amsterdam’s cheese museum with shit loads of free samples
is even wiser. We didn’t pay for one piece of that fromage.
It was at this point of cheesey overindulgence that our good luck came to an end. After eating the starter of a thai curry, we realised it was hugely expensive and did one before becoming hugely lost on the canals. We and
walking around in circles for an hour and a half.before being forced to hail a taxi back to
our home. Which turned out to be just around the corner from where we’d set off. Classic stoned flex.
