Hi everyone,
I am looking at staying at TSH Amsterdam West or Ibis West or Hotel Casa. We have 4 days so want to be fairly close to city center and will be using public transport or walking. Anybody stayed at any of these or know about areas? Budget is important as we have a fairly long trip :) Or other recommendations?
TIA
Nicky
I will start by copying what I wrote a few days ago in another topic about hotels.
If you look at a map of Amsterdam you will see a horseshoe or U shaped area with lots of waterways. That’s the Canal Zone. Just south of the bottom of the U is the museum square where the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh museum and Stedelijk museum are located. At the top of the U is the central train station. Basically everywhere in the Canal Zone and near the museums is a good place to stay. Cafes, restaurants and shops can be found all over that area. If your main goal is to visit the museums, you might want to stay closer towards the south of the Canal Zone. If you plan to take a lot of day trips by train, you might want to stay closer to the central train station. But then again, the city center of Amsterdam is compact and walkable. It’s only a 30 minute, 2.5 km walk from the central train station at the top of the U/horseshoe to the Rijksmuseum at the bottom of the U/horseshoe.
All the 3 hotels you mention are located outside the area described by me above. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay there, but you will need public transport to get to the sights. The cost of that transport should be taken into consideration.
If you can’t find a hotel in or near the Canal Zone within your budget, you may want to look at the XO hotels. Most of them are conveniently located close to public transport into the city. For instance the XO Hotel Couture.
What great and quick information! I am looking at XO hotel Couture as you suggested and it has availability :) I will book that. From what I can see most places are walkable from that location? Would you suggest an Uber or train from the airport? We are coming from San Diego. I do appreciate your time on this.
Perhaps I didn’t express myself correctly, but the XO hotel is not in the area I described. Like the 3 hotels you yourself found, it’s located outside the Canal Zone. If you use Google maps you will see that it’s, for instance, a 45 minute walk to the Rijksmuseum.
My first choice would be to look for a hotel in the area I described. Should you not be able to find a suitable hotel within that area, then the XO Couture is a hotel to consider, just like the hotels you found yourself.
Our family of 3 stayed at the XO Couture back in 2015 and found it to be a very good value in a very expensive city with an easy transit connection to the sites. It was a 20 minute single tram ride from our hotel to the Museumplein (Rjiksmuseum, Van Gogh) and another 15 minutes from there to the central train station. I would say not walkable to the center of the action (or at least not in a practical sense). Although the hotel was quite modern and very comfortable, the neighborhood was a bit underwhelming - perhaps things have changed but there were not a lot of restaurant choices near the hotel. If we returned to the hotel during the day, we ended up taking the tram back to the Canal Zone for dinners.
On our next visit in 2019, my adult daughter and I stayed at the XO Van Gogh, also a good value but right across the street from the Museumplein, very convenient to walking to many sites, convenient to restaurants, shops etc.
Today, my daughter returned from a girls trip to Amsterdam, where she stayed at the XO Van Gogh again.
