I completed another pilgrimage over the weekend, that of the trip Amsterdam. Going to a Coffee Shop in Amsterdam and smoking a big reefer has been something very high up on list to do ever since I was a young stoner back in Wodonga.

I did have all these wonderful plans to be a perfect tourist while I was there. To do things like take lots of photos of me smoking big-arse joints and send this email from an Internet Cafe while actually smoking a joint. In the end however, I just did as I always intended to do - got too stoned to be able to actually be able to make them happen. Instead I write to you now from London, with just a whole lotta vagueish memories of my weekend in Amsterdam.

It definitely proved to be everything I had ever built it up to be, plus more. My main goal was always just to go there and smoke pot legally but I also managed to find a city that was genuinely worth spending some time in.

The thing I managed to keep harping on about the most while I was there was the whole bike concept that the Dutch have got going there. I’ve never seen so many bikes in my life. The city centre was such a better place to be there any other city I’ve seen just because there was no constant cacophony of traffic, car horns and screeching tires. I was the way a city should be. I’ve always been a big bike fan and I’ve finally found somewhere that shows the benefits of everybody just cruising around on a treadly rather then trying to cram thousands of cars into a small place.

I could go on about the usual tourist things I did, like coffee shops, museums, red light districts and sex shows, but I won’t bother. Go there and see it for yourself, its worth the trip.

The only thing I’ll mention was my last hour in town. I had to leave two friends at a restaurant to say goodbye in private, so I thought that a trip to a Coffee Shop to smoke one last joint was the best way to kill some time.

One tourist shot I did get was of the place I happened to be right next door to, called ‘Coffee Shop Ben’. Strangely enough I just had to do the honors in there : )

Given that I was about to leave the country I decided to roll all of what pot I had left into one last joint, which proved to be one of the largest I’ve ever rolled, without any exaggeration required. I love to tell you that I smoked every last toke of it, but I can only say I had a fair crack at it instead. Still, by the time my friends came to get me they found a gibbering mess that could hardly spit out the words “I’m as stoned as a motherfucker. Please, I need your help to get me out of this country ‘cos I’m too stoned to even remember which country I call home right now”.

Thankfully, I had the odd favour or two in hand, so two hours later and a somewhat spaced out and paranoid journey through Amsterdam and International Customs later, I found myself escorted to a seat on a UK bound plane, wishing that I had been straight enough to think about buying some hash cake from the Coffee Shop to consume just before we got on the plane to make the trip home somewhat more entertaining : )

I’ll just have to remebemer it for next time.