Best area to stay in Amsterdam other than Centrum

We were there in late November. Highly recommend the Hotel Mai. For us, it was centrally located. Beautiful older building right on a canal. Prime location near Central Station. It is located on the edge of Chinatown and the Red light district.

Some photos from the trip, including Amsterdam.

LINK

The Canal Zone is full of hotels and is the most picturesque part of amsterdam. The hotels are usually on the expensive end though.

The Overtoom Road/ Kinkerstratt Road area is where we usually stay. It's full of cafes and restaurants but an easy walk to the Canal Zone, The Centrum and Vondel Park (amsterdam's central park).

De Pijp is another great neighborhood full of cafes, etc. that is an easy walk to the Canal Zone and Centrum.

We go to Amsterdam every 2 or 3 years and rarely go into the Centrum. We also rent bikes which makes getting around super efficient.

The Jordaan is absolutely still het Centrum.

I live near the Plantagebuurt area which is technically the city center but the calmer eastern side of it.

As for costs, if you’re somewhere desirable and walkable but not too chaotic it’s still gonna come at a cost.

More budget options are usually way out in Zuidoost (Southeast) which is kind of “the hood” of Amsterdam if you could say such a thing existed, and that’s a metro accessible kind of place, or 30ish minute bike ride which by Amsterdam standards is fricking far.

For city center but calm consider Jordaan, Plantagebuurt, Westerlijke Eilanden.

For center-periphery but still buzzing, consider Oud-West or De Pijp, these areas are walkable to many attractions and have great shops, cafes and restaurants in their own right.

For further afoot but up and coming you could look into NDSM in the Noord (North) part of city, which is on the other side of the IJ river.

For budget you’re looking at options in Zuidoost, Nieuw-West, or backpacker geared tiny accommodations in the glitz and sleaze of RLD or Leidseplein.

If you have more nuanced requirements let me know and I’ll try to tailor my suggestions!

Great info, thanks.

Hoxton is a reputable, well-known hotel in Amsterdam, great central, picturesque, classically Amsterdam location in the heart of the canal belt.

They have a pretty decent bar and restaurant on-site as well, so hence why I’m familiar with it.

Not sure it’s the most budget friendly location though.

Volks Hotel is another well-known one, trendy decor, with a rooftop bar/terrace (and a popular techno club is the basement - which is super well sound-proofed), not as idyllic of scenery as Hoxton, but likely ever so slightly more budget-friendly.

It'll be my wife and I (you don't want pics), two daughters (you ain't gettin pics) and a 5 yr old grandson (his pics are adorable). Taking a detour to Amsterdam was my idea, going to Spain ultimately, so I could visit Bruges and my uncles grave. We'll only have one and a half days to explore Amsterdam so I'm thinking we'll stay a bit outside the city and I'll rent a car. On the Amsterdam days, we'll park and ride. I was shocked by hotel and airbnb prices - I'm no OT or TB baller.

The aforementioned Hoxton is pretty much the “Negen Straatjes” so consider that as option

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My uncle was KIA in WWII and is buried at the American Cemetary in Margraten.

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I've got an uncle that's buried there too. I was going to take my Dad over there to see the grave (never happened) because he is old enough to remember his uncle. I'm pretty sure you can get there via train as we weren't planning on renting a car.

Also the local communities assign someone to take care of every grave. So you can maybe meet the family or whoever that has been cleaning your uncle's grave. They contacted us and wanted some photographs for some type of memorial but we had trouble finding anything to send over. If you have some photos or other stuff relating to your uncle they might want to see it.

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So is the Pulitzer.

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Pulitzer's bar is great, had a good time there and randomly met a couple from New Orleans.

It really is a small world

Def get the NS app!

Trains are decent but as someone who works in Schiphol area, I can confirm that on my office days the morning trains from Amsterdam Centraal to Schiphol run like clockwork.

However the trains back to the city in the afternoon/early evening are a shitshow these days, perpetually crowded and delayed, literally the reason I told my team lead I’d only be coming to the office one day per week.

I digress NS app is a great way for me to track the perpetual delays at Schiphol in real time, 9292 is another good transport app for multimodal transit (train-tram-bus) but Google Maps is also quite well synced with public transport schedules so that is a safe bet as always.

As for tickets, nowadays you can pay pretty much everywhere by card (if your physical card or phone have tap-n-go enabled) but word of warning you check in and out when boarding and disembarking.

Especially important because some stations like Schiphol don’t have the turnstiles gates to get in our out so either you forget to check in there and can’t get out the gates at Amsterdam Centraal or you forget to checkout there and you’re charged a full fare (I think like €30+ 1 way for trains and maybe like €5-€10 on GVB transit) - it’s mainly the trams and buses where it’s easy to forget to checkout that gets you.

The GVB metros are all turnstile protected.