Hotel Toon

Location!!!! Bar downstairs was superb, and bed/pillows were very comfortable.

Refuse directly outside bathroom window. Fairly loud music until quite late (not too bad but certainly noticable).

Bitterbal isn't so much a hotel as a bar with a few rooms upstairs, which gives the place an informal (even by Amsterdam standards), slightly improvised, but (as anywhere else in Amsterdam) friendly feel. The bar itself does some excellent gin & tonics and has a fine line in 'bitterballen', whence it takes its name: a Dutch type of meatball. The staff are lovely and young and super laid-back (even by Amsterdam standards...), though also not perhaps always one hundred percent on top of their 'hospitality as a service' game. Still, you're dealing with bar tenders who are also handling a few guests as a sideline, not with professional hotel receptionists or concierges, and that in itself has its very own charm... Our room was clean and of a decent size with a cool double shower, and the location is superb: you're within walking distance of practically everything that matters, and if you can handle some steep stairs as part of your daily exercise routine, then you should be very happy here.

As you'd expect from a building of this age and type that is essentially run as a b'n'b, there are a few very minor drawbacks: the water pressure in the fabulous shower is perhaps a bit meagre, there is (as virtually everywhere else it seems in Amsterdam) a quasi-permanent draft, at least one of the light bulbs didn't work on a bedside lamp, and the extra duvet we asked for from the delightful bar staff never showed up, but hey: you're in Amsterdam! You've got canals and boats and museums and quite possibly the nicest people all about town, so these are quibbles, at most. Just go with the flow and you'll be fine.