Nothing at all concrete yet, but it looks as though Ira and I may be going to Amsterdam for my birthday, hopefully fitting in a short hop over to Britain as well. I need to start looking at the cost of apartments, canal houses and hotel rooms, as well as the flights. Last time I went to Amsterdam, it actually turned out cheaper to buy one return ticket to Amsterdam from Astana, and then a completely separate return flight from Amsterdam and back again to London. Dialaflight have many cheap flights on offer, and if we fly to Britain first, their site could help out with the flight to the netherlands. They also cover a lot of other destinations, with a flight to Cyprus easily discovered. Whilst some may find Cyprus exotic, I prefer Holland myself, and this time I’m hoping to actually make it to the sights I missed last time, such as the Anne Frank house, the Escher museum and maybe take in a canal boat trip.

Come Friday afternoon, I will be in Amsterdam, with Alex and ChrisD. Anyone reading this blog over the last couple of months will already be aware of this fact, however I have been checking the terms and conditions of the various sponsored posts schemes I use, and I need to make something clear…
I will be posting trip reports on this blog, reviewing both the places we visit (coffeeshops, hopefully the Escher museum, and a proper canal boat trip) as well as the quality of the smokables. In order to not get my blog banned, I need to make one thing clear - DO NOT break the law where ever you are. When I refer to smoking something nice, I am in no way suggesting that you should smoke anything illegal in your own country. To do so would be to risk being banned, and if anyone should break the rules and regulations in their country, I would not wish this blog to have been a catalyst in any shape or form.
I will try and remember to link back to this post each time I mention something from Amsterdam that would be illegal elsewhere, but do feel free to remind me in the comments section of the relevant post if I forget.
Illegal drugs are bad.
They are just not criminalised in all nations…
Thankfully I do not need to post a separate disclaimer for caffeine, alcohol or nicotine, as these are not illegal, at least in the countries that the sponsored posts schemes are based.

I hope this post may be of use to people thinking of visiting Amsterdam, whether you be a regular reader, or have arrived here via one of the search engines…

Forums
Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory Forum - An offshoot of www.CoffeeShopDirect.com . Friendly most of the time, with all sorts of questions answered, not just weed based.

Channels.nl Forum - Not just weed based, you will find threads get a little more heated here. If you have never joined a forum before, perhaps start off at the ACD one listed above, and progress here once you have found your feet.

Virtual ‘Dam - Relatively new addition, seems to have no massive egos currently residing

Maps
Amersterdam CoffeeShop Direct - Maps and SO much more. The amount of info collated here is mind boggling. If you intend to boggle your mind whilst in Amsterdam, do check this site. From this site the ACD Forum listed above was born. So much info of use, I have downloaded the site to my PDA, so I can browse it offline, if there are no free WiFi hotspots in range.

WiFi Hotspots - A pretty comprehensive of official WiFi hotspots. I am also taking a program WiFiFoFum with me, to easily detect where kind citizens have left their WiFi network open for others to piggy back and use their internet access.

Wiki Map of Amsterdam - With places of interest marked. Most have descriptions attached if you click on them. Very easy to navigate around.

GVB Transport Map - The English version with trams, buses, trains and metro services marked out. Simply click on the area you are interested in to zoom.

Nemisis’ Map - Assuming you have Flash installed on your internet browsing device, an incredibly helpful layered map. Difficult to succinctly describe, check it out and click on top right buttons to see how much info is packed in. Each point has further information if you hover your cursor over the area.

Google Earth - Well worth installing. Free, and you can place pins in your favoured destinations. When you are done with that, you can then do all the obvious things like checking if you left anything out in your back garden the last time a satellite took a photo of your area! Once I have returned to Kazakhstan, I will be publishing some data files that should pinpoint locations of worthy places of interest. I have a draft copy, but many places are not yet confirmed in terms of their exact location.

Other/Misc
Who Is In Town? - Particularly useful if you belong to a forum. You can easily check who else will be around at the same time as you. Assuming you don’t dislike their online persona, you can arrange to have a ‘real world’ meeting and see if you have anything (apart from the obvious ) in common.

Muffin Man - A MySpace page dedicated to a brand of special muffins. Blatant advertising, but has a little information at least.

St Nick’s Canal Boats - If you would like to take a trip around Amsterdam’s canals, I’d recommend using this non-profit organization over the big operators.

Escher Museum - No idea how good this is yet, but I (like many ex-students) appreciate his works of art, so I’ve provided the link for now. Will try and provide a proper review after our trip, assuming we make it there.

erowid.org - a collection nearing academic standards of information pertaining to drugs. Although mixed in with personal views, you will find a lot of cited research results and scientific facts here. Useful for reassuring yourself if this will be your first experience in Amsterdam, or if your know-it-all friend is spouting rubbish.

I am also collating all these sites in one place so I can find them easily whilst in Amsterdam. Hence the following unique phrase to allow me to find this specific post easily - purple horse.

It is worth checking the other pages of sites I have listed - many have different sections, each useful, but if I link to each section on each site, I’ll be typing forever.
If anyone else has any sites they would like to see listed, leave a comment or contact me, and I’ll add it on.

No sites have currently requested these links, nor is any compensation involved.

I have just sent a message to Alex and ChrisD, asking if they fancy visiting the Escher museum whilst in Amsterdam. Although I do intend to get thoroughly relaxed whilst in the smokers’ haven, I would like to check out a couple of places of cultural interest. I’m not sure if we will make it to all of these, but I would also like to check out the Anne Frank hidey hole, if we can arrive when the majority of other tourists are not causing a log jam, as well as going on a boat trip around the canals. Rather than using one of the tours organized by the big three companies, I found a charity that runs a trip on a different type of boat, where drinking, smoking and eating is welcomed, and there is no fixed charge. If the trip turns out to be a waste of time, all we will have lost is a little time and gained a fresh perspective on the city. Hopefully it will go well. I intend to write posts on points of interest following our trip, though it may need to wait until mid-October, when I get back to Kazakhstan. Anyway the catalyst to me writing this post was a garden designed by the inventor of the famous Dyson hoover (James Dyson), who came up with the concept of a water feature that had water travelling uphill.

I have to admit the photos got my attention… Although obviously water can not naturally travel against gravity by going up hill, my first couple of assumptions did not hold up to any sort of analysis… Vacuums and mere optical illusions that involved having the hills not actually inclined in the way they appeared not would be too easily noticed by the public. Anyway, check below for a diagram of how it actually works…

Ps If you have not figured out what Escher has to do with this, either look at your average student’s poster covered wall, or Google it