How I Spent My Amsterdam Vacation

During my vacation, I was able to experience several of Amsterdam's attractions. The Van Gogh Museum was one of the first places I visited. I was exhausted from just getting off the airport, but some of his art is very beautiful, and I didn't want to miss out on seeing it.

I went into the city center after seeing the museum to take a look around, possibly do some shopping, and get some dinner.

I'd heard a lot of things about Amsterdam and thought that a lot of them were exaggerated, but I'm here to tell you that they're all true. The strong smell of marijuana is the first thing you notice, followed by the practically fully naked girls in the windows.

As if the prostitutes in the windows weren't enough, there are live sex performances and sex shops on every street offering every imaginable sex gadget known to men, yet none of this intrigued me.

Then, as I continued going around, I noticed something more than cannabis and naked women: casinos.

I grew up in New Jersey, roughly 2 hours from Atlantic City, and I spent a lot of time in the casinos after I turned 18. So I went in to take a look at a few of them.

I ended up spending most of my time in those casinos. The first one I went to only had video gaming machines, but they also featured video poker, video blackjack, and video slot machines. I didn't do well here, so I only stayed for about an hour and spent approximately 100 Euro before leaving.

The second location I discovered was much nicer. People in these casinos, unlike in New Jersey, are dressed up in nice clothes rather than jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts. This casino offered actual table games, so I tried to play some Blackjack, but there was a player at the table who either didn't know how to play or was involved in some sort of cheating with another player, though I'm inclined to believe he simply didn't know how to play blackjack.

So I started playing Roulette and was having a great time; at one point, I was up around 400 Euro before I started losing. So I made the decision to leave the casino and go for a walk.

The next day, I found myself in another casino and wanted to check whether my luck had returned. I walked to a slot machine and put some money in, and on the third spin, I won another 200 Euro. Feeling happy, I decided to enter the poker room, where things became extremely interesting. I got into a game, and boy, these guys were good, but I was winning just as much as I was losing, and in the end, I may have walked away with a few Euros more than I had when I went in.

After about 5 hours of playing, I decided to go outside and stretch my legs a little. I eventually decided to sit and have a cup of coffee, but I had no idea what the difference between a coffee shop and a caf? was.

A caf? is a location to sit and drink coffee in Amsterdam, while a coffee shop is a place to buy and consume marijuana. As I sat there sipping my coffee, I spotted a group of folks rolling joints. Now, I had heard about this, and I had smelled plenty of marijuana when I was there, but I had no idea it was being sold so openly. So I went out and bought some cannabis to experiment with.

I proceeded to the counter where I saw other people buying weed, and the man behind the counter was really kind and showed me a menu of what they had for sale. I ended up purchasing a white widow joint. I was not prepared for what the man behind the desk said was pretty strong material.

Before I was smacked with this sensation, I had smoked roughly half of the joint. I've been drinking for a long time, but I've never gone out of my mind like this, even when I was in college.

I eventually made it out and got some fresh air, as well as some waffles. I thought that now was the time to go back into the casino and win my money back, and in the end, I lost another 600 Euro and had to be assisted out of the casino after falling off my chair.

So, if you're heading to Amsterdam, be aware that the grass is really powerful.