My daughter and I were in Amsterdam in early February. We stayed at the Hotel Estherea and absolutely loved it! It was perfect for a girls trip. It sits right on a canal, is very quiet, yet a short walk to so much. We never needed to take a tram the entire week we were there, and I was coming off of a knee replacement, to give you an idea. On their Instagram page, they had a promo code that included breakfast. That was a great deal as that ran about $27 per person per day, and the breakfast was exceptionally good. If I go back, I would stay here again in a heartbeat.
Go to the reviews pages and I posted reviews about the hotel, restaurants and the canal cruises and day trips. So I won't repeat all of that here, except to say the private canal tour was the best money ever spent (and it was not expensive, IMO). Our day in Delft was just perfect. The factory/museum was so much more than we were anticipating! Everything there is hand made, so not cheap, but beautiful stuff. They make Christmas plates and ornaments, so that might make for a lovely keepsake.
Here is a way to do Amsterdam and Iceland. Take Icelandair and do the stopover. We did just that on this trip, and it was my 6th trip to Iceland. It is amazing and I head back again in September. Anyway, if you do that you can stay in Iceland for up to 7 days at no extra flight cost. And then you can just continue on to Amsterdam from there. If you decide to do this and want any help, just ask. We usually go for several weeks at a time, just in Iceland alone.
