Amsterdam Adventures

Now on our way back from Barcelona we had to transit at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam (we took the KLM). On our flight there we barely had time to spare on our 1 hour transit as we were finding our way from one end to another, not to mention we'd to get past a immigration counter.

This turns out to be something we'll have to remember everytime we stop at Schiphol.

See, on our way back our flight plan was as follows:
1730 - Arrival at Schiphol.
2100 - Departure from Schiphol.

This means we had roughly 3 hours of spare time in Amsterdam. Yep, we purposely chose for this flight, as we had one purpose for such a long transit: try space cakes.

Not that it's our first time trying out cannabis - the last time we were in Amsterdam we smoked some Smelly Skunk. Just headed into the smoking cafe as recommended by otousan, was greeted, brought to a dark billboard lighted up by UV, and asked what we would like. Got ourselves a packet, and then proceeded to ask the barman how do we go about smoking it.

Barman gets a regular who's smoking to show us how. Regular opens up a normal cigarrette, mixes the Skunk in with the tobacco, rolls it up again with paper provided for this purpose and there we go!

Our first joint was rather good. We'd that buzz akin to getting high from smoking or drinking, nothing extreme. After that, we were pretty much on our own to roll our own joints and all. Thankfully the Regular was nice enough to leave us a couple of cigarettes to mix as well.

Project roll own joint - FAIL. We didn't get any of that buzz after that. And since we were leaving Amsterdam to head to Paris the following day, the rest of our Skunk went to waste (no, we didn't dare bring it out of Netherlands!).

Lessons learned: how to roll own joint (needs practise), don't buy loose Skunk but buy ready-made joints.

This time tho', we almost didn't end up going into Amsterdam. During our flight over, we asked our fellow passanger sitting next to us (who put us in mind of a cross between Steve Jobs and Noah Bennet aka The Man With The Horn-Rimmed Glasses) how long it would take to get to Amsterdam Centraal from Schiphol. Turns out that it took no more than 20 minutes. Still, once in Schiphol we started calculating how long it'll take to travel back and forth etc, we got rather discouraged and thought to just take things easy and stay put happily in Starbucks.

In the midst of taking photos within the airport (and risk looking rather suaku), we happen to bump into a member of Team William - Bio Boy. Turns out Bio Boy was also on the same flight as us, so the two of us decided to hang out together until it was time. Seems that he, too, had the idea of making a quick stop to Amsterdam to take photos.

It could be that there was courage in numbers. Or having a partner in crime. Or also the fact that we passed by a luggage locker.

Because in the spur of the moment, we dumped our luggage in a locker and headed out to buy tickets to Amsterdam Centraal. Time was on our side as we a train was ready to leave when we boarded. And three stops later, we were in Amsterdam. Space cakes, here we come.

Lessons learned: don't forget to bring along passport and boarding ticket when leaving the airport while midtransit. Hell if we know how to get back in if we didn't.

The short of what we did in Amsterdam: walk through a couple of streets, take a few photographs, Bio Boy bought postcards, we bought a space cake, took pictures at landmarks we've yet to identify (we only know that they're near Madame Tussauds), ran back to Centraal in the rain.

The train back to Schiphol was at 2030. Which meant we would be cutting it real fine in making it back in time to catch our plane. Honestly, we really do wonder what would we have done if we had missed our flight.

It was hectic when we finally arrived back at Schiphol.

Imagine Schiphol's Departure and Lounges layout to look like a 'T'. Our departure gate was located on the left side of the horizontal line of the 'T' (Lounge 3). Our bags were in the right side of said horizontal line (Lounge 1). And we entered from the bottom of the vertical line of the 'T'.

Getting past an immigration counter where our passports were checked, turning into Lounge 1, past another immigration counter, finding the luggage locker, getting our bags and dump onto a trolley, out another immigration counter, into Lounge 3.

It was only then when we were heading towards our gate while in Lounge 3 that Bio Boy actually stopped to look at the announcement boards, and saw that our flight was delayed till 2200.

And no, that delay wasn't caused by us.