H & 2T’s Amsterdam Xmas Weekend - Part 1: Good smoke, good food and a unicorn

Merry Christmas bande de fomblards! Hope you are all enjoying some nice foie gras and good french wine (Oops … zolde Komar and Secra), got some nice presents (stoked for my 2hrs of golf lessons and my leatherman tool), and are ready to finish the year in zerozap style. As promised, here is a recap of my annual pilgrimage to my favorite city in Europe. I have a decent amount of pictures so I’ll split this up in two posts starting with the trip there, coffeeshops and food.

After an effortless ride on the Thalys (I can’t believe I drove every time all those years), we got to Amsterdam Centraal Station a little bit before noon. Next stop is my trusted Marriott with its awesome king size beds.

Ah Leidseplein! I had missed you. Next stop, Rookies for a little Rookies special. Not bad but not even close to the Chocolope, Casey Jones and El Gray I got from the Gray Area a little later. When we got out of Rookies, we naturally went straight to find a restaurant (a little thai place we went to last year), but on the way I took my first picture of this trip. It was the perfect random picture to take when you get out of your first coffeeshop in Amsterdam:

After the re-up at the Gray (unfortunately the place is so small it’s always impossible to smoke there, we found a nice this nice window table at this other coffee close by. 

(bien kiffante la petite table juste a la fenetre sur le canal)

After that, we were in the perfect state to do our Christmas shopping for the family. The only way to not hate Xmas shopping is to do it really high, works for me. After some efficient walking around we rewarded ourselves with this

Pre-rolled 0.8 pure J of Dolphin Haze … ouais c’etait venere. We needed a few hours after that to get ourselves back into shape for dinner. H found, as she usually does, a nice not too expensive restaurant that I’d definitely recommend. Buens. I love how the waitress gave us a nice 1 minute spiel of the specials and shit in Dutch before we could tell her I didn’t speak Dutch. That actually happened at every other place we went to. I guess H’s blonde hair help us not look like tourists right off the bat, until they start talking and we're both looking at them like a meme face.







Then, check out these awesome pitchers at the Mexican restaurant the following night

Another coffee I really liked just because of the Nico Bellic atmosphere and the fact there's never anybody in it. It had some pretty good rules posted too:

 

Finally, the last coffeeshop highlight was stumbling on the Barney’s on the last day where we treated ourselves to a pure J of Liberty Haze (2011 cup winner):

I’ve got a part 2 coming a bit later that’ll include a return of Malevtich and an awesome bike ride. H and I wish you all a Merry Christmas from a hole in the wall!




(picture taken in a pub actually called “The Hole In The Wall”)

Zero