"A clean-lined, modern design hotel by Edward van Vliet, that's both great value and housed in a pretty five-storey canal house."
Budget boutique hotel NL Hotel Amsterdam is a reassuring reminder of the predictability of Dutch good taste. The design approach – minimal, stripped-back, with the rare, welcome flourish – is evident from the moment you walk off the street, up a narrow hallway and into the reception-cum-breakfast-room: polished floorboards in alternating broad and narrow, stained and blond stripes; the odd tulip in a tall vase; Wallpaper and design magazines spread out in a vast earthenware bowl; a pendulous light-sculpture on the wall and, on the check-in desk, a stylized sculpture of an open hand, matching those seen in the aged architecture throughout the city (and another secreted in a tiny alcove in the stairwell).
The facilities
Over breakfast at the boutique hotel, enticing views reach across the road (busy at rush hour), over a canal and towards the perimeter of the semi-circular old part of town Amsterdam, with its thickly clustered eating, drinking and intellectual delights. The young clientele – in their 20s, 30s or early 40s – are fashionably attired and comprehensively international.
The rooms
Although the rooms are small – the boutique hotel is a converted 19th century residence – the absence of unnecessary adornment opens them up. There are a few splashes of colour: an imprinted-metal mural of – appropriately – tulips on one thin section of wall and chairs in a softly coloured pattern matching the bedboard.
The large, in-room bathroom, containing shower and toilet, is a lesson in elegant spareness: pale-grey stone cladding and slim steel fixtures – although a little catch on the shower taps, encouraging supposed environmental abstemiousness, did require a minor mental workout to bypass and achieve the desired, indulgent gush (perhaps useful practice for design boutique hotel-stays of the future).
Star rating:
Address: Nassaukade 368, 1054 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Rooms | suites: 13
View rooms
Address: Nassaukade 368, 1054 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Rooms | suites: 13
Booking info
Arrival:
Fri 29 Aug 2008
Departure: Sat 30 Aug 2008
No. adults: 2
Departure: Sat 30 Aug 2008
No. adults: 2
Check Availability
Who stays here
A global range of creative types in their twenties and thirties who come to Amstedam for work and play. Usually a stag-party free zone.
Come for
- Remco, the owner/manager, who's very hands-on and charming
- Good vibe
- A few good ideas, like a pre-paid mobile phone you can borrow
- Location: not too close, not too far from the action The one wonderful room at the back, complete with patio
Not suitable for
- Slender services mean no night porter (so if you are checking in after 6pm let them know) and no room service
- Some street noise (but also canal views) in the front of house
- Early birds: breakfast served from 9am onwards
- Lovers of old-fashioned chintz
Awards
Sunday Times 07; New York Times 06
Children
Extra beds and baby cots are available upon request
Eating in
Breakfast only. The continental breakfast will suit most of the guests – this isn’t full-English territory – but there would ideally be more than one person to serve coffee and bread as well as man the front desk; the jam was Bonne Maman
