Canals, diamonds and red lights – an Amsterdam getaway COMPLETED About This Page:

[chezp]

Canals, diamonds and red lights – an Amsterdam getaway

Dates:Thursday 9 – Saturday 11 February
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (39) and DH Mark (46)
Destinations: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Resorts: Conscious Hotel Museum Square
Celebration: a Christmas present for Mark

The introduction to this is a fairly simple one. What do you do when your last vacation, albeit the most amazing once-in-a-lifetime one to Disneyland, Vancouver, the Disney cruise through Alaska, Seattle, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Monument Valley, Arches, Canyonlands, Denver and Chicago, finished in mid September 2011 and you don’t have another one planned until the end of April 2012?

Well, what would you do? that’s right, plan another vacation of course! Getting from mid September to Christmas had been tough enough, following a back injury for me and a torrid time for me at work, so the prospect of waiting another four months for a break into the new year didn’t work for me at all.

I kept trying to persuade Mark to go away for a weekend, but he kept worrying about money. Usually I’m a worrier about that as well, but sometimes you just have an over-riding need to get away from it all – and that’s exactly how I felt. We chatted through a lot of different options, as there are plenty of cities all across Europe that we could head to, literally within a couple of hours flying time. There are times I love living in the UK!


The one place Mark did talk about wanting to return to was Amsterdam, which we had last visited in 2001, but only for one day. It’s how our tradition of visiting another capital city around the world each year started, as Mark took me to Paris for the day on our first anniversary in 2000, while I took him to Amsterdam for the day the following year. Since then, the tally looks something like this:

• Rome, Italy
• Brussels, Belgium
• Dublin, Ireland
• Oslo, Norway
• Stockholm, Sweden
• Helsinki, Finland
• Monte Carlo, Monaco
• Berlin, Germany
• Tokyo, Japan
• Bern, Switzerland
• Madrid, Spain
• Cairo, Egypt

Not bad huh?

Having got that much information out of him, I set about finding a good deal. I looked at Easyjet, which is one of the low cost airlines operating around Europe. However, to be honest, by the time you add in everything you now have to pay for with them, including early boarding, luggage, food on board etc., it was just as cheap to go with British Airways. There weren’t too bad the last time we flew with them in 2010 to Jersey, so hopefully we’d have a good experience again – and anyway, at an hour’s flight each way, it’s hardly the longest journey.

I found some dates in February that worked and, after checking with Mark’s work that they could spare him for a couple of days (and stressing that it was a Christmas surprise, so not to say anything ) I went ahead and booked. I got a flight that headed out early on the morning of Thursday 9 February, coming home late on the night of Saturday 11 February. I didn’t mind coming back late, as we’d have the Sunday to recover before heading back into work.

My next challenge was to find a reasonably priced hotel in Amsterdam, and like most cities these days, that was quite a challenge! Any hotels that were cheap usually came with pretty awful reviews on TripAdvisor, but finally I was able to find out, the Conscious Hotel Museum Square that was pretty well rated for quite a good price, so that it – sold! I went ahead and booked both the flights and the hotel.

Then I just had to wait for Christmas Day to spring the surprise...

As it was a special present, I wanted to work out a way to present it in a special way. I figured in the end that I’d give Mark all his other presents and then hold on to his big present. I wrapped up the Dorling Kindersley guide that I had about Amsterdam, and put the flight and hotel details in it. His face was a picture when he opened it, although I think it took him a moment to take it all in!



Now that Mark knew what we were doing, I could at least talk to him and find out what he wanted to see while we were out there. He really surprised me by saying that he wanted to go to a diamond place, as I didn’t realise that Amsterdam was a big place for that. By the way, I am not getting my hopes up for anything...

I started to work out the places that I wanted to go to, sharing ideas with Mark, most of which he was happy with. Then I started to try and work out whether it would be worth getting an I Amsterdam card. This is essentially a City Pass, which gives you free access to a variety of attractions in Amsterdam and transport. I did a few sums and it quickly worked out that it would be cheaper to buy the 72-hour pass, which would last for the whole time we were in Amsterdam. Even better, Viator was having a 10% sale off everything, so I went ahead and booked our passes in the sale. Result!

A couple of weeks later, I got another deal through my e-mail for 10% off with Holiday Extras, who specialise in airport parking and hotels. I already knew that I could get the Hilton, which we love, as it’s right next door to the south terminal at Gatwick, for £72. With the 10% off, that went down to £65, which I thought was amazing value, considering some of the prices I’ve seen charged for staying a night there.

The hotel came without parking for the night, because to add parking in would have cost us another £60, which I thought was insane for three nights! Instead, I figured that I’d just add the parking separately... A week or two later I found a good deal for just £30 for valet parking for those three days – result!

And now here we are, about to set off. I feel very uncomfortable – no touring plan in hand, although I’d be lying if I said that I had NO idea of what I want to do and see, because I do, but this is going to be a bit more of a relaxed trip than usual. Of course, that’s the plan – whether that works out in reality remains to be seen!