Anyone ever been to amsterdam?

anyone been there? if so whats the bud and culture like? any other info would be nice. im going there for my senior trip, but that 2 yrs from now.

 

haha thats were im spending my 18th birthday. me and friends agreed it will be then,
4th august 2010, 3yrs from now hehe. basicly the bud is the best in the world, the scenery is great. not sure about culture, but u can leggaly buy all soft drugs like mushrooms etc. basicly the best thing ever, u should deffenaytely look forward to it, i am, but 3yrs is a loooong time, maybe by then mj will get derciminalised in uk and us, meaning coffeshops everywhere

 

I was there when I was 15, but I had no money, was fairly closely supervised, and didn't smoke pot then anyway. I guess my contribution to your question is that it was a lot of fun even if I didn't do anything that you would look forward to.

 

did your parents take you?

 

Go to a coffee shop. Try and get White widow, Jack herer, purps or blueberry. Dont get the prerolled unless you like tobacco mixed with your weed.

 

same. but i went when i was about 10.

i'm going back there for my 18th bday with a few friends, as somebody else said.

 

is there an age limit for smoking weed there?

 

yeah, i think it's 18

 

My barber went there for his senior trip. He said two or three days is enough, because there's not that much to do after that. Basically weed and legal prostitutes. Haha. Although yeah, you can get mushrooms and stuff there. And there's a tour of a beer factory (Heineken, I think?) you can go on. There's also the Anne Frank museum which I would love to go to, it seems pretty interesting. Also, yeah, when you're in the coffeeshops get Jack Herer; the best strain ever.

I'm thinking of going myself in a couple of months but I'll need to find somebody to go with (most of my friends don't smoke ).

 

and ull need id to rpove ur 18 aswell, and u can only purchse up to 5grams it think

 

^ at a time.
I always wanted to eat a quarter of hawaiin's and smoke a blunt then go on the Anne Frank tour...

 

i think shrooms are now ilegal there right?....damnit im thinking of going there but i allready have a week to alaska for a week...IM TOKING WITH ESKIMOS!

 

i should hope at least some person has been to amsterdam or the world we would never know it was there

 

I heard from several people that you have to be a resident of the Netherlands to buy there as of a year ago. Does anyone know anthing about this?

 

i´ll be going back for my 3rd time in march for Jam in the Dam. a three-day music festival at the Melkweg in downtown amsterdam.

there´s plenty to do in amsterdam. yes, after a few days of constantly smoking in coffeeshops, you may get a little unfocused for sight-seeing and stuff. but amsterdam is such an interesting place, you´d be hard-pressed to be bored with nothing to do.

my advice for coffeeshops: dont go into the first one you see. chances are it´s right by centraal station and geared for tourists which means shittier service and higher prices. it helps if you have a map of where some coffeeshops are before you even go (there´s many maps online).
the weed will inevitably vary from month to month and place to place. so if you hear that a certain coffeeshop has a killer strain of weed, it´s possible that they dont offer it anymore or that it´s not of the same quality as it once had been. weed is a plant that you can only control so much. coffeeshops try to offer a standard product (which they´re getting really good at) but the weed will always be changing.

dont go into the bigger coffeeshops that have multiple locations or that are generally just large in size. again, these are geared towards tourists and masses of people. some names that come to mind are the bulldog, smokey, ....... there are others.
the more you go away from the center and off the beaten path, the more you´ll experience the real coffeeshops. lower prices, friendlier staff, chill places, etc. and you´re more likely to find dutch people in there, not a bunch of loud americans.
keep in mind that coffeeshops are BUSINESSES. it´s their job to take care of you, the customer. as with pretty much everything, you can see it before you buy it. you cant necessarily touch the weed, but you can definitely ask to see it and smell it before you buy. ask questions about the weed from the person working. ask what´s their favorite.

a lot of places have pipes, bongs, vaporizers, grinders, etc. for you to use. just be very polite and ask nicely. also, pretty much every place has free papers and tips/filters for you to use.

i think i only remember one or two coffeeshops that sold alcohol. they´re pretty much all juice bars instead. it´s a smart idea since the weed they´re selling is strong enough so if you were to mix alcohol with that, people would get out of control and problems would arise. that´s one of the major selling-points of coffeeshops - that there are hundreds that DONT cause problems in the neighborhoods. and as with any establishment, they would like you to buy something if you´re going to be using their space, sitting at their tables, etc. some places REQUIRE that you buy a drink, or they´ll ask you to leave. i´ve definitely walked out of some places because of this (even after i bought weed there, they still wanted to force me to buy a drink). since you´re not supposed to smoke anywhere except for coffeeshops and in your home/most hotels, it makes it somewhat difficult if you just wanna smoke the stuff you´ve already got and not buy more or buy a drink.

a few years back, they changed the laws for hard and soft drugs. that´s when dried mushrooms became a hard drug (because they´re generally more potent dry vs. fresh). but you can still buy fresh mushrooms from places called "Smart Shops." the places i went into had a selection of maybe 5 or 6 kinds to choose from. it was funny, for their descriptions of the effects (there´s a little "menu" with all the info on it for each kind) they all say the SAME thing. something like, "mild body buzz, etc etc." but you know that some are way more potent than others. ask a lot of questions and recommendations from the staff and follow them! i split one thing of fresh mushrooms with a friend and had a really strong 6-7 hour trip. anything more than that and i probably couldnt have taken it.

when walking around the city, watch your ass! bicycles will come out of nowhere. trams will NOT slow down or stop for you. you just need to get out the way. of course, that´s an overstatement, but imagine if all the trams slowed down for every person that was in their way. the only "safe" places are on any kind of raised concrete like a sidewalk. otherwise consider yourself to have a big taget painted on your back.
and of course, keep an eye on your belongings. i´ve never had any problems with pickpockets or anything, but just use common-sense.

yes, the age to enter coffeeshops and smoke is 18. and the limit you can buy at one time is 5 grams. and i think if you live there, you can legally grow up to 5 plants in your home (with no permits involved, i think - something that large operations would require). buuuuuuuut..........
i´ve definitely seen people buy way more than 5 grams before. in this one coffeeshop, this guy came in saying that he only had a couple of hours during his business trip to get some weed that he wanted to take back to the UK or Russia or somewhere. he had heard about this one kind from this one coffeeshop and want to buy it. all of it. well, at least something like a couple of ounces. the lady working said that she had no problem with that (after some other customers left) except that there are cameras watch all the transactions. so, the few of us in the coffeeshop went outside, the guy gave us a bunch of money, and we had to individually go in and buy the weed until he got the amout that he wanted. there was no question of mis-trust either. he trusted us with his money, then with his weed, then with the fact that he had so much on him at once, then with the fact that we knew he was going to smuggle it home. not a problem with us, not a problem with the coffeeshop.
so, there are ways around certain limits and stuff, but just be smart about it.

so yeah... that´s about all i can think of for now. it´s definitely the COOLEST city i´ve ever been to. you must go!

 

i heard a rumor about this a while back. they were talking about having only dutch people being able to buy weed to help curb the amount of "drug tourism" that goes on because it gives a bad image to the city of amsterdam. but it´s because of that large amount of tourism that they would never do that. it´s a huge money-making business for the economy.

check this out for more detailed info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands

"On 27 November 2003, the Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner announced that his government was considering rules under which coffeeshops would only be allowed to sell soft drugs to Dutch residents in order to satisfy both European neighbours' concerns about the influx of drugs from the Netherlands, as well as those of Netherlands border town residents unhappy with the influx of "drug tourists" from elsewhere in Europe. As of 2006 nothing has come of this proposal and Dutch coffeehouses still enjoy robust foreign patronage."

 

First off, take your ID; they're shit hot on not letting underagers in, so don't be offended if aynone asks to see it - they have licences to protect, so it's in their interests to do so.

Second, do not look or act like a tourist; by this I mean wear your bag the Euro way (over a hshoulder and yur head, resting on your hop so you can always seeit), don't look street dealers in the eye, don't buy anything from street ealers (most of them are actually just muggers), if anyone asks yu if you speak WEnglish on the street, make out you don't (they are probably a pickpocket), and if yu have to consult your map or guide book, don't do it in public. Oh, and if yu are standing by a map in the street (there are quite a few)and someone start offering you directions, ignore them; they usually expect to be paid for this 'service'.

Think that's about it!

 

Not true; you can nly buy 5g at any one time, though, and it is an offence to carry more than an oz.

 

no

and I would pass out before I smoked more than five grams of dank to the face in one day, any one who says otherwise is lying

 

while 5 grams is the most you can legally have on you at one time, you usually buy it by the gram. plus, when you´re there, you´re going to want to try as many different kinds as you can, so i suggest buying the smallest quantity at a time. some coffeeshops sell their shit in different ways, though. some have one or two straigh-up prices for all their weed, it just comes in different sizes depending on the quality. some have a minimum purchase of 2 grams. that can be pretty common, i think, but it´s still just as common to find a place where you can buy 1 gram at a time, too.

so you shouldnt even really ever need to have more than 5 grams on you as a traveller. you gotta keep smoking all that herb you´re buying! cause at the end of your trip, you dont want to have anything left over. if you do, your options are to smoke it ALL, give it away, or smuggle it back home.