Travel Tips

every year the magazine high times and 420 tours put's together a week long event called the cannabis cup, in which various coffeeshops enter to see who has the supposed best marijuana in amsterdam.this year 27 shops entered, more than any previous year. as a judge it's your job to take your judges passport to all of the entered shops and get your booked stamped and sample their entry. we managed to knockout all 27 shops in 4 days buying an average of one gram per shop and sometimes they're hash entry. each day there was a party and seminars at the pax party house and nightly events at the melkweg. we did it just to say we participated in it, we both agree that it's a waste of time to do it again. we did discover some really cool shops in the process though.

the dutch growers have the freedom to grow in an enviroment where they have no real fear of being caught, therefore they can take they're time and experiment with what they grow. where as here in the united states there is the growing buisiness of the drug war and uncle sam loves making his cash of confiscated drug money, so with fear of being caught some american growers rush things. the pot in amsterdam is much smoother than what we get here, and tastier.

here's a list of competing shops this year and what they entered, i'll spare my thoughts on each variety but if you want to know you can ask, cause i took notes on each strain..our plan was to enter each shop, purchase a gram, sit down and drink some tea or hot chocolate and roll a spliff from each shop one at a time..here's the list..
1. any day - stella blue (sativa cross)
2. barney's- morning glory(won the cup)
3. betty boop- total eclipse
4. bluebird- star warz
5. blue velvet- ice nuggets
6. brandend zand- millenium power
7. the bushdoctor- sv1-special
8. de dampkring- buhhdah's sister
9. the dophins- white dolphin
10. dread rock- crystal blondie
11. el guapo- blue haze
12. free I- yellow ( worst out of all)
13. greenhouse- super kali mist
14. grey area- grey haze
15.homegrown fantasy gallery- yumbolt ( my fiance's top choice )
16. kashmir lounge- ghandi sativa
17. katsu- s.a.g.e ( real good )
18. de kuil- knockout
19. the noon- blueberry ( of course )
20. old church- sacred haze ( not worthy )
21.de rokerij- heaven's delight ( super good smell, mellow high )
22. the rookies- rookies skunk ( awesome stuff and really nice shop)
23. rusland- k-2
24. sensi museum coffeeshop- jack herer ( they weren't selling it but giving free vaporiser hits, and free spliffs of other sensi strains ) very chilled shop!
25.siberie- white siberian tiger ( white widow)
26.softland- white smurf ( good space shakes here)
27. tweede kamer- n.y.c diesel

the place where most of the events took place was called the pax party house, ironically located next door to a police station. there were 3 floors of activities and a snack bar ( good tosti's and frittes ) there were budding marijuana plants all over this place that you could touch,smell,photgraph, drool over!!! they had vendors set up giving demo's of their products which usually meant free smoke! this place was fun cause you could go relax smoke a few shop eat all in one place!

glad i took this picture, in the pax you were allowed to smoke all the weed you wanted, but no cigarettes.which was fine by me, i still don't understand the european way of spliff smoking. we met a couple of english ladies at barney's that explained they had to mix marijuana with tobacco cause pot was to expensive there and they had to make it last, but the dutch have access to pot anytime they need it CHEAP!

this is your guide to the entered shops, in this picture you'll see the katsu's entry s.a.g.e which tastes and smells very simular to sage, only sweeter. this was some really nice stuff i gave it a 45 out of 50 points if the potency was higher it may have gotten my vote but the high was really mellow.

the overall vibe i got from this years cup was pretty good, the coffeeshops that entered were all mostly tourist style shops but there were some entered that are way off the map of any tourist searching for pot. such as brendand zand. the 420 tours/ high times staff were pretty confused most of the time it seemed, thanks to people like soma to take over and make it more fun than money and competition. soma would walk the crowd passing out his lovely joints laced with jelly hash. he wanted everyone to be on the same vibe.the funny part of this was you could tell where the joints were by the coughing areas, wherever you heard coughing thats where the joint was.we avoided the whole senerio after the de la soul show, which made us see how things to come would be. so we visited the neccesary coffeeshops while enjoying other aspects of amsterdam at the same time. we only went to the pax when we had to vote and when we wanted to shop for souveniers. i highly reccomend that anyone thinking of doing the cup to think again, you will have more fun on your own and you won't be rushed. you don't want to miss a thing in this beautiful city.

the overall winner of the cannabis cup this year was barney's coffeeshop, they won the cannabis cup for the MORNING GLORY entry, and they won for best coffeeshop. we visited barney's first and morning glory was the first and last marijuana we smoked in amsterdam! it wasn't our favorite choice as # 1 shop, but it's not a bad place. the vaporizer will knock you out!! my fiance choose brendand zand as her favorite shop!