Hotels and transportation in Amsterdam, Holland

[tukrumunu]

My wife, our 2 teens and I are going to Amsterdam next month. From what I read, hotels in the central Amsterdam ("Centraal") are recommended. But they are quite expensive - anywhere from $600 to $900 per night.

Are there any hotels, in the $200-$400 range per night, which don't have to be exactly in "Centraal", but can easily reach Centraal by train?
Priceline seems to be reasonable, but it doesn't ask for the number of individuals staying in the room.

Also, are there any train cards that can be bought for getting on and off trains?

We are planning to see
Lieden
The Hague
Keukonhoff
Giethoorn
Delft

Bruges sounds attractive too, But it appears to be 6 hours by train from Amsterdam.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks!

[Bogle7]

We went through this 6 months ago.
We are AirBnB people. We had multiple cancellations after reservations. We had multiple hosts just blow us off. We saw some withdraw and relist at a higher price.

We arrive in Delft on April 13th. Land at Schiphol and 30-minute train ride. Five days in Delft.
We will do a day trip to Amsterdam.
And, Den Hage and Rotterdam.

Our next stop after Delft is Brugge for 4 days. 3.5 hour train ride.

We plan to use the https://www.ns.nl/en/travel-information/ns-app for train travel intra-Nederland.
International travel app is https://www.nsinternational.com/en

[nanciT]

We stay in The Hague usually at the Marriott which I really like. I lived in Holland for several years and The Hague is very easy to get around. I am sure other's may have advice on where to stay in Amsterdam. TripAdvisor is good to check also.

Your list of towns to visit is great, Delft is my favorite and a lovely town to walk around all day. You may also want to see The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, tickets are online and must be purchased in advance. Madurodam is another fun park to visit which is in The Hague.

The trains and trams are very easy to get around. Have a great time!

[daleddm]

Trams are a constant all over the city ... staying out just a very little way from centraal means a 5 minute tram ride. I stayed at the Park Plaza along the Vondelpark - a lovely little neighborhood and very reasonable. Actually, being out a short distance like that was nice - peaceful and very walkable, small grocery stores, bakeries, etc. On the other hand, stayed in the center district another time and was OK, but a little seedy and can easily turn a bit overwhelming with the tourist thing.

[bikesandbeers]

You could look in Amsterdam Nord which has an easy metro connection to central. Not a lot for families in centeral unless you trust your teens in one of the calmer hostels. Could also look down by Amstelvern

You could stay in any other city, Leiden, Harlem, Utrecht. Intercity trains in the Netherlands are great, but they do get pricey for 4 if you don’t have the off peak discount card. I am not sure if you can get one without a Dutch address. One discount card should be good for 4 people. You can buy OV-chip karts at the counter at the airport. These are good for all trains and busses in the Netherlands. You don’t want to pay cash surcharges for single tickets


If you are doing Leiden and Delft, no need to make the trip to Bruges unless you were planning on going to Brussels and Antwerp.
You can get a national museum kart( not the Touristy Amsterdam one), that is good all over the country. Leiden has a great museum on the history of science and medicine, and ancient history (Greece Egypt) and an ethnography museum.

I also recommend the WWII resistance in museum in Amsterdam. The kart should be good at everywhere else except for Anne Frank house, although you need special reservations for the Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmusuem

[bikesandbeers]

Look at the “season Tickets” section of the NS website for the train discounts. I guess they have mobile ticketing now in addition the the OV Chipkaart, it looks like the off peak discount can now be had for 5.60/month.

It looks like they also have OV bike share and bikes are of course the preferred way to get around in Dutch cities

It’s been a decade since I was last there, but I think I paid over e$250 for a tiny bed for a couple in centeral Amsterdam.

[Oakdale19]

Stayed at and enjoyed the Albus Hotel. Prices do seem fairly high next month. I recommend visiting the Keukenhof. It opens March 23. Huge tulip and flower park/garden/amusement park. Hard to describe perfectly but Check it out. It’s right outside Amsterdam. https://keukenhof.nl/en/

[Picasso]

Good timing! I am in Amsterdam now for a 2 weeks family holiday. Highly recommend the Pulitzer Hotel, but it’s maybe a tad above your range - it’s worth it though.

Be sure to visit the Mauritshuis in The Hague if you enjoy art and hopefully you have tickets to the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijks.

I have more restaurant recommendations for spending some time here if you like, most of which are in/around Jordaan.

[Valuethinker]

My wife, our 2 teens and I are going to Amsterdam next month. From what I read, hotels in the central Amsterdam ("Centraal") are recommended. But they are quite expensive - anywhere from $600 to $900 per night.

Are there any hotels, in the $200-$400 range per night, which don't have to be exactly in "Centraal", but can easily reach Centraal by train?
Priceline seems to be reasonable, but it doesn't ask for the number of individuals staying in the room.

Also, are there any train cards that can be bought for getting on and off trains?

We are planning to see
Lieden
The Hague
Keukonhoff
Giethoorn
Delft

Bruges sounds attractive too, But it appears to be 6 hours by train from Amsterdam.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks!

Train is easy into central Amsterdam. We stayed at a hotel near the airport (which wasn't a picturesque area, but had everything we needed).

Do be careful of pickpockets in Amsterdam as well as phone and bag snatches etc. It's really crowded in the very touristy central part.

Bruges is chocolate-box pretty. I think though basically burning a full day getting there and back is not worth it. We liked Antwerp very much (sort of an Amsterdam on low power) but if you are already doing places in Netherlands, you probably don't need to stray into Belgium. (I have heard Ghent is nice, bit less touristy than Bruges, but again it's probably not right for you in this trip).

[masni]

Hello,

I suggest that you look at the accor (accor.com) hotel chain for a list of hotels in the NL. They have a very good range (I usually used the Ibis styles) to suit your budget. The good thing with them is that there is a standard of service that you know you are going to get.

I also join their membership program as to benefit from their discounts from day 1.

[Cruise]

It has been awhile, but we really liked the location of the Hilton Amsterdam. Very suburban.

[tukrumunu]

Thank you all for your feedback. We have booked a hotel near the airport. We can cancel the reservation without any penalty. We are still looking for something closer to the city.

Did anyone stay in an "apartment hotel" before? It sounds like AirBnB, but it is not the same.

[OnceARunner]

It's been a while but we loved our stay at the Doubletree Centraal Station. Directly next to the Centraal train station, and easy walking distance to 90% of what we ended up doing in Amsterdam.

[eddot98]

We stayed at the Amsterdam Marriott and liked the hotel and the location. We pretty much walked to all the major sites in the city and used our rental car to travel to The Hague. (We drove to Amsterdam from Paris. We kept the car for the trip to the airport.) I just checked a random date in April (Tuesday the 11th) and while it’s not inexpensive, it’s not too outrageous either at 520 euros with a one day cancel policy. A few months ago it was probably much less. I really don’t like the way that hotels are priced.

[young danny]

I worked for a Dutch based company for seven years and have been to all those cities or nearby them. The main non US based hotels I liked that were more European feelings were van der valk and NH hotels. https://www.valk.com/en and https://www.nh-hotels.com/hotels/the-ne ... lsrc=aw.ds