"Goodbye Amsterdam" Amsterdam by gasca

As you first come out of Centraal Station your first impression is: wow, this is really crazy! since you are walking and cars and fietsers (fiets is the common word for bike in Dutch and those who ride are fietsers) come across.

Whatsmore, in the city there are no traffic lights except on big crosses. Why is that? More accurately, How's that possible? Dutch are tolerant people, there are few cars and they drive carefully as they know fietsers cross the streets suddenly.

Begijn Hof

Some things can be said about Dutch: they are tolerant, respectful, practical and strict. Two first as it is the first country where the use of drugs is not severely punished. They are respectful as long as you don't bother others.

Dutch are practical people, indeed. The massive use of bikes to move around, the legalization of weed and the permission of hard drugs (it's forbidden on coffeeshops but you can have a "trip" somewhere else) and some other details show you.

One thing about smoking before going deeper: people smokes EVERYWHERE. This may not like locals but it's true. The only thing you need is to respect others, there are many non-smokers or people even totally away from the fact that drugs are tolerated, so don't smoke in touristic places. Vondelpark grass is a "vonderful" place to smoke if you want to.

Finally Dutch are strict. Police is everywhere: on a horse, walking, driving or biking!
If you drive a car and park in a forbidden place, you're lost!

Typical centraal station bikes parking picture

Smoking

Let's go to the main attraction to many tourists...
There are more than 200 hundred coffeeshops in Amsterdam, although they aren't placed along the most important streets (Damrak, Dam, Rokin, etc..) so as to respect others. You usually can ask for the menu, they will give you
the prices for 1 gram or the grams in a fixed price. Prices are expensive, but well, is what you get, and barmans usually are ready to advise on the quality of any weed strain or hash kind. Dutch stuff is strong, so be careful ask staff for strengthness, roll small joints, smoke relaxed and little by little. I suppose you will not be tempted to stay all the day in coffeeshops, but in any case, you have plenty of things to do in Amsterdam!!!

Not to let you wander around dozens and dozens of CS, one good area to look for is Spui street and surroundings. Just behind Royal Palace take the 2nd street and walk direction to Central Station. You will find Any Day, a good place to buy. Around there you can find Grey Area a two-american-run CS with a particular guy at the desk. It's a little place to hang out for hours but he's an expert man.

Don't buy anything on Bulldog and Grasshopper chains as they are told to have bad quality weed.

Smoking jargon (So you don't look such a newbie)

Bong - a cylindrical water pipe used to smoke marijuana.
Spliff, joint - a hand-rolled marijuana cigarette.
Dope, grass, weed, pot, reefer - marihuana.
Buzz, loaded, high - slang terms for a high or a drug-induced euphoria.
Roach - the small end of a marijuana joint which remains after most of the cigarette is smoked.
Toke - slang term for art inhalation of marijuana or hashish smoke.
Take a Toke - use cannabis.

What's that about 4:20?

You may have noticed that in some coffeeshops there's a motto that says something like "The place where it's always 4:20"

"...it likely began at San Rafael High School in California in 1971 when a
group of friends regularly scheduled a time to meet in front of a campus statue of Louis Pasteur and smoke dope. The term "to 4:20" spread within the high school and eventually seeped into the lexicon of Dead Heads, the Grateful Dead's most devoted fans."

"From there, with the help of the Internet, it spread across cultures,
timelines and borders."

• In a nutshell:More than a bunch of Coffeeshops