My husband and I (both in our 60s) are back from our 2.5 week trip to The Netherlands (April/May). Thank you to all who answered my questions during the planning process. I hope this report will help others who are considering going.
I will provide itinerary detail below, but will start by summarizing: we absolutely loved The Netherlands. My husband and I take turns selecting our trip destinations, and he was not wowed by my selection of The Netherlands. By day three, he was saying, “I think I could live here.”
The Dutch people are so friendly and warm, the ease of travel is phenomenal and our meals were fantastic. We ate at Dutch, Spanish, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Argentinian, Indian and Moroccan restaurants. With a few exceptions, every meal we had was excellent.
We used The Hague as our base for the first two weeks, and then stayed in Amsterdam the last four nights. In hindsight, we wish we had stayed in The Hague the entire time, and day tripped into Amsterdam for two to three days. I wasn’t expecting much from The Hague, as it doesn’t seem to get as much attention as Leiden, Delft, etc., on the forum, but I thought it looked well-located for our planned day trips. It ended up being a delightful surprise, because from the moment we arrived we felt at home. It is both my husband’s and my favorite place of everywhere we visited. It didn’t feel as touristy as the other cities and didn’t have the constant crush of people to maneuver through. It was relatively quiet, clean and super walkable, with excellent restaurants.
In The Hague, we stayed at Staybridge Suites The Hague-Parliament. I cannot say enough good things about this hotel. One of my main reasons for selecting this hotel was the location and the free 24/7 access to the laundry room. The breakfast was plentiful, and they switched it up throughout our stay. There was a tea/coffee/cappuccino/latte station available 24/7 and a very nice happy hour three evenings per week. The room was large and quiet, had a kitchenette, and the bed was comfortable. The water pressure was great and the hot water plentiful. The tram to the train station was steps away from the front door and the tram to Delft was a half block away. We had initially planned to stay in The Hague, then Utrecht and then Amsterdam, but we liked The Hague and this hotel so much that we cancelled the Utrecht hotel.
In Amsterdam, we stayed at a bed and breakfast (Herengracht 21). It is a canal house built in 1600. It offers two rooms, and we had the room facing the canal (the view was stunning). The room was up two very steep flights of stairs. It is on a fairly quiet street, but of course there was some noise up until about midnight. I can’t comment on the breakfast, as it was offered starting at 8:30, which didn’t work for us because of our museum ticket times. What I realized on this trip is that we are at a point where we value convenience more than charm. We missed the free laundry room, the frig in the room, the 24/7 coffee station, the happy hour. We missed having a door to the bathroom.
Day 1: American Airlines flight from Orlando through Philadelphia. Uneventful, which is all I can ask for.
Day 2: Arrived in Amsterdam at 8am. The line to process through arrivals moved at a good pace and we had no issues. We had very little sleep on the plane, so we were a little out of it trying to figure out the correct train to The Hague, where to tap in to pay, etc. Once we arrived in The Hague, we were too tired to figure out which tram to take, so we walked to our hotel (about a 20-minute walk; very pleasant). We checked in around 10:30am and they were kind enough to prioritize getting a room cleaned so we could check-in early, which we so appreciated. My husband returned the favor by plugging something in that he shouldn’t have, and it flipped the breaker. Staff was very nice about it, though, and fixed it for us immediately.