We're here!

The flights here were rather uneventful. We were all very tired and slept a lot from Boston to Reykjavic and then on to Amsterdam.

We were quite upset when we checked into the hotel. We've stayed at the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky many times. The hotel itself is right in the center of Dam Square, behind the war memorial. The hotel owns a strip of canal apartments on a side street called Oudezijds Achterburgwal. We have had very pleasant stays in these apartments before - very interesting old canal apartments that date back to the 1700's.

When we checked in, they told us that they no longer had the 2 bedroom apartments available, only one bedroom apartments. It turns out that they remodeled the buildings and made them into modern luxury apartments. So sad!

These old places had antique Dutch staircases, interesting old furniture and wonderful views. The hotel manager was very apologetic and determined to make us happy. While he and his assistant took Jeff over to view the new apartments; Justice, Journey and I stayed in the hotel lobby and were served some Dutch pastries and Fristis.

So we ended up taking one of the new modern apartments (what else were we to do?). It's just not the same. The old apartments were quite spacious - accomodating 8-10 people. The new apartment that we are in (in the same old building) is a one bedroom. It's a decent size, but rather small for 2 adults and 3 rambunctious children! They kept touting the fact that the new apartments have these giant plasma televisions - we didn't come to Amsterdam to watch TV!

While the hotel did go out of our way to make us comfortable (adding free breakfast buffets to our accomodations), it is still upsetting that our reservation for the 2+bedroom apartment was made (and confirmed) at the beginning of September and we were not notified that they were no longer available.


The pictures below are shots of the courtyard outside of our apartment.