Winston Kingdom Club

The ultra-hip Winston’s on the Warmoesstraat is now even cooler.

With music nightly to feed your soul, this is one of Amsterdam’s favorite places that is blessed with amazing style!

Music or fun every night of the week!

Funky rooms & hostel dorms in budget property.

Park Cafe-Restaurant

This is the Hotel Arena’s cafe and restaurant on the Oosterpark. They say “located in the Oosterpark, in a vibrant neighbourhood in Amsterdam Oost. The cafe-restaurant is divided into a laid-back lounge, a cosy bistro and a restaurant with table linens. The large terrace is practically in the Oosterpark, but is every bit as comfortable as it is inside. At Park cafe-restaurant the menu focuses on vegetables, with full flavours, bright colours and exiting preparations. We cook along with the seasons and use plenty of fresh herbs, that if at all possible go right from our own herb garden to your plate.”

Hotel Monopole

Myself and a friend recently rented two single rooms in the ‘hotel’ Monopole, Amstel 60, Amsterdam, to the tune of €60 per night for four nights (€250 + city tax) on October 11th -14th.

My heart sank when we got a look at the first room; a small, dank place with twin cots, dirty marks on one wall, a tatty thin carpet, old fixtures and fittings and a unpleasant view of what appeared to be an industrial building with a grimy roof.

The second room three floors up a break- neck stairs into the attic, was similar to the first but icy cold and dull in the day time, with more dirty marks and a fist-sized hole in one wall. The single sheets which covered the matresses seemed clean but the dank duvets on top looked like they hadn’t been washed in several weeks; there was a dark brown cigarette burn hole in one. Having viewed the warm and inviting looking rooms on their website, my friend and I were quite upset about the arrangement. When I asked to be moved from the attic to another room, I was told that we had gotten a special offer and that ‘rooms in this part of Amsterdam generally go for €90 or more’.

We had to lug our own bags to our rooms. That night we discovered that the club behind (ironically called ‘Escape’ – at this stage I wanted to) had little to no sound-proofing and that it went on until 4.30am (bar Mondays when it shut its doors at 2am). Strangely, the hotel Monopole makes no mention of this or the bar/club right next door to them on their website.

On the third evening when we arrived back at the hotel, we found our towels hadn’t been changed, or rooms/ toilets cleaned or toilet rolls replaced. In fact the only thing touched and removed was the cups we had requested (much to their astonishment) the night before.

Some kind of hammering and building was going on in one of the rooms for much of the time we were there (daytime only).

My view of Amsterdam was sullied by the very poor accommodation and lax approach offered at the hotel Monopole. However, aside from the hotel, I did get to see beautiful Dutch architecture, ground-breaking painting, creative theater, layers of history and the wonderful buzz of such a diverse European city.

Hotel Barbacan


Dorm style room accommodations and smaller rooms available.

In 25 years of travel, this is the worst hotel in which we’ve ever stayed. It was dirty, cramped, and in disarray. There is no elevator, our room was the size of a hamster cage, and the phone, one window, and one of the two naked bulb lamps were broken. The carpet was threadbare and stained, the sheets had holes, and our room overlooked an abandoned building, complete with debris, broken glass, and rotting vegetation. We fled after one horrendous night and felt like escaped POWs, except the Geneva Convention requires that POWs have more rights!

Don’t be fooled by the three-star rating or the "family hotel" hype. The only family this place evokes is the Adams Family. If the only room in the city is at Hotel Barbacan, you should fight the junkies for a park bench!

Hotelboat Ideaal

We had a great stay in this houseboat. It was absolutely amazing, comfortable and cosy. We enjoyed the fireplace a lot. Although we were there in December, it was pleasant on the boat, particularly with the heated water bed. It was windy and the water was choppy, but we never felt the boat move. I thought the location was fantastic…. Although we found all the stuff as it was written on the site we still really didn’t expect anything like this. The boat really gave me a feeling of home when I got back there at night. I am sure I want to back sometime in summer and enjoy the sun deck and barbecue.

Info:
for rent all year round