On my recent trip to Amsterdam I was lucky enough to have the hotel and flights sorted out by one of my buddies - good man! He booked us in to The Hotel De Looier, which is a former diamond factory ( in the 19th century) in the antique district of Amsterdam, 5 minutes walk from the Leidseplein (one of the main bar/restaurant areas).

She also warned us not to smoke cannabis in our rooms as there's a 400 euro fine for that! Of course, none of us would have anyway, but it seems that the general view on young Englishmen in Amsterdam is that their primary concern is to smoke as much cannabis as possible - it had already been assumed of us by some Dutch guy on the train immediately after our arrival (though he then asked if we wanted to hang out with him for the evening, so maybe he was just hoping we wanted to do the same thing as him!) Anyway...

Between the 5 of us we had a twin room and a triple room, so we thought. In reality, my twin room turned out to be a double room, so it's just as well my room buddy and I are close friends! Actually, I wasn't really surprised because the look in the eye of the woman at reception when we checked in warned me to expect as much. Being English, we didn't like to complain, so I don't know whether they'd have been able, or indeed willing, to change our room for us if sharing a bed had been utterly unacceptable to us.

The triple room shared by my other friends was far more spacious and included a chair and a small table and had a larger bathroom. Both rooms had three large windows, so there was plenty of light, but I'm not sure it was possible (we didn't find a way) to open any of the windows in the double room, which would have been a Godsend on the first morning as the heavy meal and alcohol of the night before played merry hell with our digestion, thus rendering the room something of an explosion hazard!

The bar looks like something from Neighbours circa 1987 (check out the photo and you'll understand), but it had a certain type of kitsch charm. I'm not sure what time the bar area is open until as we only made use of it once and that was in the early evening. Sadly I can't really comment on the variety they offer either as we only had bottles of beer or water and there wasn't really much else in evidence. When we were in there they didn't have any music on, but they did have a TV on showing, perhaps unsurprisingly, a Dutch TV show.

MY VERDICT

To be honest, the place looked like it could do with re-decorating and this is my only major gripe. As I mentioned earlier, the decor screams 1980's and the dark carpets and curtains can make it seem a bit dingy. My second gripe is that the rooms are very basic, without even tea/coffee making facilities, although I could be showing my inexperience with foreign travel here by expecting such. Either way, my mum would have had a seizure if she'd gone there and discovered she couldn't brew up!