Amsterdam Travel Guide - Page 2
New Year's Eve 2009 / Amsterdam Hotels / Sweet Suites / → All Tags
New Year's in Amsterdam Can Be Way More Civilized Than You Thought
The view at midnight from the Blauwbrug
Looking to say goodbye to the craptastic year that was 2009 and still in need of a hotel room somewhere? We've already told you where to book in Miami, New York and the important timezones but we'll be hitting up more cities today for New Year's Eve. Did we miss a city? Want a better deal? Let us know and we'll help you out.
Amsterdam's so famously louche that spending Thursday there would be a New Year's to end all New Year's, right?
Kind of. You can get stoned as you like, obvs, but the Dutch actually make it a rather civilised do, with fireworks going off left right and centre. If you want fireworks and impromptu street parties, you need one of the main squares - like Nieuwmarkt or Dam Square - or stand on any of the central canals.
But if you want a full-on partay, try Jimmy Woo - reputation has this place down as the best club in the city, and Caspar the owner is a riot (we met him the other week). Expect a classy affair - Moet and caviar are doing the rounds - running from 11pm to 5am. Presale tickets cost €55 from here.
As for where to stay: there's swank, but it doesn't come cheap. Caspar's favourite hotel is the Dylan, and it has some superluxe suites free... but they're going for a whopping €950 (garden view) or €1050 for a canal view.
Hotel Key Cards / Room Keys / Amsterdam Hotels / Hotel Technology / Noisy Hotels / → All Tags
High-Tech Room Keys at The Hotel Patou But Shame About The Noise
Following on from our Do Not Disturb gallery yesterday, today we present to you the funky room keys at the Hotel Patou, Amsterdam, where we stayed this summer.
The Patou is a trendy little hotel on designer haven Hooftstraat, and as befits such a stylish gaffe, it eschews actual keys (too retro) and cards (too common) for these ingenious electronic key fobs.
Ingenious? Well yes. Because they are exceptionally light, hence easy to hoof around, have a nice leash to make losing them tricky (let’s face it, you’re in Amsterdam, and losing your key will be a pretty sure thing), and they don’t deactivate if you stick them next to your phone, as cards can do.
Hotel Openings / citizenM Hotels / Hotel News / Amsterdam Hotels / → All Tags
Amsterdam Gets a Second CitizenM
Last summer marked the debut of citizenM hotels, a funky new affordable boutique brand whose first property was birthed at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. We hit up the hotel's opening party, spent a night inside and watched the place closely all the way to the day it won its very first award. And now, just under a year later, we're happy to announce the debut of the world's second citizenM property: the citizenM Amsterdam City.
Located on Prinses Irenestraat in Amsterdam's financial district (between the World Trade Centre and city center), the property has a major focus on art: "an ultra large beachy image" by Dutch artist Elspeth Diederix adorns the building's façade, and Andy Warhol's portrait of Queen Beatrix is displayed in the lobby.
Hotel Deals / Amsterdam Hotels / CitizenM Hotels / Airport Hotels / → All Tags
Last Chance for $50 Rooms at CitizenM Amsterdam
These days, a good deal isn't hard to find, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop pointing them out to you. Kind of like how your mom always nags you to grow up and move out already no matter how many times you tell her to back off.
Wednesday is the last day for you to take advantage of the 39 euros per night deal available from citizenM Amsterdam Airport, which equals about $50 per night and is refreshingly uncomplicated. From the hotel:
From February 4th to the 11th
25,000 rooms in the year of 2009
One room, any day of the year, is only 39 euros.
Really, there's only so much hand-holding we can do here, people. So unless you want to provide us with your credit card number (it's OK, you can trust us), you're going to have to be big kids and book this one all by yourself. Head over to CitizenM's website and get to it.
Yotels / Airport Hotels / Amsterdam Hotels / Hotel Hell / → All Tags
Yotel Schiphol Less Than Perfectly Peaceful
It's now a few months since the newest purple capsule, the Yotel Schiphol, opened up in Amsterdam’s airport. We were wondering if anybody had been able to sleep well there, because that purple approach lighting always stresses us a bit.
Well, apparently experiences have been mixed. While some guests have been perfectly happy at the newest Yotel--notably including people who had already tried the Yotel Gatwick--others obviously found Yotel's Give Bed Peace a Chance campaign quite ironic. One guest complained of being able to hear every move the guest in the next room made, despite using the complimentary earplugs, and even worse:
These guests walk up and down the narrow corridors with screaming babies. They shout at one another from room to room. It is far from restful.
Our summary? The Yotel is just what it is: a not unreasonable airport alternative. With scarily boring corridors like the one in this picture, you can't expect perfection, right?
[Photo: Casualist]
Budget Hotels / Hotel Ads / Amsterdam Hotels / → All Tags
Hotel Ads That Make You Go WTF?
There’s nothing we enjoy more than a cheeky ad campaign, but we have to wonder, how far is too far?
Via Boing Boing we find Amsterdam’s Hans Brinker hotel, whose ad campaigns over the years have proclaimed the property to be “dirty and carry a wide variety of bacteria;” to feel “just like home” (complete with an air mattress in a sparse room); and to feature a “unique design” involving a button and some kind of thin, curly hair-like thread that we may be being perverts about.
Of course, those crazy sexy cool commenters over at Boing Boing are in love with the idea, ranging from the intellectual (“I actually agree with the intent behind this ad … I think the germophobia in the U.S. has gotten way out of hand,”), to the TripAdvisor-y (“I’ve stayed there, it was a lot of fun!”)
So now it’s your turn to fess up. Is this ad genius or god-awful? And of course, if you’ve stayed there, let us know about it in the comments below.
[Photo: Boing Boing]
Anti-View / Amsterdam Hotels / Flickr / Sofitel Hotels / → All Tags
A Grand View of Glam Patio Furniture From Sofitel Amsterdam
You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.
We always hesitate just a little bit when we post an Anti-View from a hotel in a big city. After all, it's a city and, with buildings right up next to each other and not a whole lotta flex room when it comes to selecting real estate, you're bound to see stuff outside your hotel room window that's not exactly Killer View material — people's houses, people having parties, people in other hotels, etc.
And yet. While the dreaded anti-views are more understandable in big cities, such conditions don't change the fact that they're still craptastic views that you don't want to see outside your expensive hotel room.
Airport Hotels / Snapshot / Amsterdam Hotels / Yotels / → All Tags
Yotel Wants You to "Give Bed Peace a Chance"
In honor of the opening of the third Yotel property this year, Gerard Greene (Yotel's CEO) and Simon Woodroffe (founder of YO!) campaigned to "Give Bed Peace a Chance" in the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (the location of the brand new Yotel Schiphol. Get it? Like John Lennon and Yoko Ono?
Forty years after John and Yoko campaigned to "Give Peace a Chance" in the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969, these dudes recrated the iconic image to market their hotel with this whole "bed peace" thing — it's cute and clever and such, but we would be remiss if we did not take a second to point you toward the real video of "Give Peace a Chance" over on YouTube.
And we assume that when the Yotel dudes use the word "peace", they are referring to the sort of peaceful sleep that results from knowing that, if you have a morning flight, you can quite literally roll out of bed and walk to your departure gate if you've spent the night here.
CitizenM Hotels / Hotel Awards / Design Hotels / → All Tags
CitizenM is All Grown Up, Earns Its First Award
“This was perhaps the most hotly contested decision I have seen the judging panel have to make in the six years I have been involved in these awards.”
No, that’s not a judge from Dancing with the Stars—it’s Matt Turner, editor-in-chief of Sleeper magazine, which is a magazine about hotel design, development and architecture, not about boring stuff.
The magazine recently awarded CitizenM hotels with the European Hotel Design Award of the Year, as well as awards in three other categories for innovation, technology and graphic design. We already knew guests love the chain, now it seems the rest of the world is catching on, too.
Of course, this news just thrills CitizenM. “Our team and partners worked hard to create an innovative, contemporary hotel for the cost conscious traveler,” CitizenM CEO Michael Levie said in a statement.
All the canned PR speak aside, this sounds like a pretty big coup for a hotelier that just opened it’s first hotel at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (pictured) in June—and even more so considering the plethora of competition of boutiquey, budget-friendly hotels across Europe—wouldn’t you agree? Or are we aSleeper on the job here? Heh, heh, eh… oh, my.
Yotels / Airport Hotels / Hotel Sex / → All Tags
Snapshot :: Yotel Schiphol Looks Like a Yotel
We already peeked in on the CitizenM airport hotel at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport today and now we can follow that up with a review from a reader on the newest airport hotel over there--Yotel Schiphol.
Hunter Walker over at Digital City sent us some snaps of the brand-new place. Guess what? It looks like a Yotel, meaning teeny tiny capsules rooms.
CitizenM Hotels / Airport Hotels / → All Tags
CitizenM Schiphol :: You Love It, You Want Some More of It
My, my, you people waste no time rating a new hotel, do you? Citizen M's outpost at Amsterdam Schiphol airport hasn't even been open six months and you all rush to the Internets to talk about it. So what do you have to say about it?
In short, you love it. Here are some of your choice words:
"Everything was clean, worked perfectly, HOT water, fluffy white pillows... and friendly, helpful staff."
"The rooms are small, but well laid out so that the room feels bigger than it is."
"If you don't mind a 20-minute train ride to get into the city, this is the place to stay in Amsterdam."
"I wouldn't recommend this hotel to older people or people with kids, but for single travelers or couples, it's perfect."
OK, we get it! You like Amsterdam Schiphol, you really like it! But you might have to curb your enthusiasm for a CitizenM Hotel near you. The hotel's promising more locations, including Glasgow, but no other new cities have been formally announced.
Had a different experience at the hotel? Share it with us in the comments.
Yotels / Hotel Parties / Hotel Openings / → All Tags
Yotel Schiphol Opening on September 30th and Looking to Par-Tay
You know Yotel, the budget-friendly hotel chain located inside Gatwick and Heathrow airports with rooms that look (and are spaced) like cruise ship cabins? Well, they're opening a location at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on September 30 and are looking for some people to toss back a few drinks with in celebration.
Interested in imbibing? Through December, book one of the 57 cabins available at the hotel and get a free bottle of champagne. Just e-mail customer@yotel.com with your booking reference number and you'll be breaking out the bubbly before you can say "felicitaties." (That's Dutch for congratulations.)
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