After a civilised day one it was time for the Wolfpack to unite.
I Am making good choices
Ok but before we ran around the desert together looking for strippers and cocaine, I did decide to get up at 7am for a morning meditation and a lakeside run – because I’m doing good stuff to be a better me.
After ten minutes of I Am affirmations I ran past the ten foot tall I Amsterdam letters and my smile reached from ear to ear.
Exercise is such an instant dopamine hit and jogging is my favourite way to watch any city wake up. I was proud of myself for making the good choice to get up and go.
There were bicycles everywhere.
People dressed in stripey tops and tan coloured corduroy trousers with scarves effortlessly strewn around their shoulders, round glasses resting on their noses and grandad caps covering their blond haar.
The air smelt so fresh and full of flowers, and the lakeside path was full of morning joggers saying goedemorgen to each other. Every ten minutes I’d spot somebody hidden away between the reeds in a yoga pose or meditative trance.
I Am making other choices
Two hours later I was sat outside a coffee shop having a joint. Because life’s all about balance.
It’s been so long since I last had some that the first toke did hit me. It felt like bubbles in the brain. Then somebody pressed the pause button on time.
We sat there in our lazy haze, people watching for a while, taking in the scenery while taking in the chronic and sipping on some aptly named Looza juice, loving life more than life itself.
I Am in Love
At one o’clock, feeling airy and moving at a sloth-like pace, we levitated to Dam Square for our Sandemans “free” walking tour.
The group followed Alicia along the cobbled sidestreets and over countless bridges, weaving our way through Amsterdam one decade at a time.
The city was born seven hundred years ago when fishermen started to build around a Dam in the River Amstel and, as everybody knows, it’s grown up into a city of freedom and vice.
It’s such a melting pot of trade and creativity and it’s got more nationalities than any other city in the world. It attracts artists and philosophers and poets and dreamers. You can be whoever you want to be and do whatever the hell you want to do.
It attracts me.
In fact, if Amsterdam was a tall, dark, handsome man I’m pretty sure I’d consider revoking my anti- marriage views right about now.
Amsterdam loves bicycles. It cares about the environment. It’s weird and wonderful. It’s open-minded. It’s colourful and alive. It’s happy. It has stories to tell. And above all else it’s got the best attitude towards living life.
Instead of trying to keep you in a cage with rules and restrictions, your free to make choices and whether they’re good ones or bad ones, Amsterdam’s got your back.
I actually think there’s a hell of a lot to be learnt from this. You can apply it to policies, relationships, raising children, managing teams – anything really. It’s all about facing the reality of human nature.
— it’s freedom to fuck up.
I Am blazin
Anyway that was enough history and philosophy for one day, time to get high as a kite.
Although I much prefer the smaller independent coffee shops that play reggae music and have bean bags to sit on, we stumbled across a Bulldog and it was rude not to go in.
We sat downstairs in a crowded room with mahogany walls and cow print cushions next to two young Venezuelan guys with fantastic moustaches and lit up.
I cry from hysterical laughter three times a day on average and have had the appetite of a wild boar since birth, so apart from a bit of a light fuzzy feeling in the head, I don’t really know that I feel much different being stoned versus real life.
It was still fun to be part of it all though. Our Blazin” Squad was an eclectic mix….dreadlocked backpackers, teenage boys on their first jaunt of corruption, couples on a romantic weekend away, well seasoned stoners and hash virgins.
We sat around in a mellow trance, taking in the atmosphere, and the fumes, until the munchies kicked in.
I Am old
After an intense debate about whether or not pineapple on a pizza is acceptable, we were physically drooling.
We plonked ourselves down in a dodgy Italian eatery on the main strip and ordered the world’s largest Hawaiian pizza, because, for the record, pineapple on a pizza IS acceptable. We also ordered a sophisticated glass of red and a token salad on the side to make us feel less obese.
After committing carbicide we decided to call it a day and by eleven o’clock we were in bed doing facemasks.
I swore I’d never grow up. I promised myself I would never be that boring person who wanted the night to end. My mantra was always sleep when you’re dead… But nowadays it’s more like sleep or you’ll be dead.
So goede nacht Amsterdam