Hotel des Arts - Amsterdam, Netherlands     

Nice clean friendly hotel, very well located for the centre of Amsterdam. No problems with this hotel, come in on the train from the Airport just go right up the centre Street and keep on walking. No issues with the hotel and we stayed there over new year. by the way, new year in Amsterdam is excellent.

It was our third trip to Amsterdam and the web page of the Hotel advertised a newly refurbished and charming 17th Century Hotel oozing with charecter and very central to the Heart of Amsterdam. What they didnt mention was it was probably the 17th Century when they last cleaned the place. We booked a double room on the web and were asked for payment in Full within 60 seconds of arriving which I thought unusual but not alarming until that is I saw the state of our bedroom with its two single beds pushed together to form a double ? double back breacker more like. The room was dirty and bare save for the dust lazing about the place and the ensuite was undescribable. I' m not going to even attempt to waste words on it. If you wanted to get wet in the shower you had to run around in it and hope and pray the odd drop of water hit your back. Do you rememeber the toilet paper the grandparents might have had ? you know the stuff you could also use as tracing paper for school projects well this hotel still uses it which prompted us to find suitably vacant alternative wcs with 21st century toilet paper. Its ok you can forgive the fact that they dont have a lift and the stairs are practically vertical but come on - proper double beds, real toilet paper and a shower that does exactly what it says on the tin are minimal requirements for any hotel in this day and age. Basically if you still want to stay here then bring cleaning materials and a spray for fleas. we both got bitten several times from the neck upwards as the little bastards only come out of the mattress to bite you when your asleep and dreaming of real hospitality elsewhere.