I need recommendations for a 5-day trip to Amsterdam on a comfy yet not luxury budget for two 50-yr old g/fs.

Question

We are two fun-loving, art-loving, architecture-loving, but also nightlife inclined single young-minded spontaneous extroverted 50-year old girlfriends. Not the Birkenstock, backpacking, not-shaving, functional travelers. We are used to Europe, but more the Mediterranean countries. We are professionals, but obviously, with the dollar what it is, we can't expect to be doing all we'd like. We are thinking of going late September. We are not sure where to compromise, hotel, food, shopping, museums, tours, what-you-may-suggest... We know we want to avoid American brands, Marriott's, pizza huts, Starbucks.

Answer 1

Since you say you're art-lovers might I suggest the museumjaarkaart (museum yearcard). For 35 euros you have a year of admittance to 440 museums in the Netherlands (31 in Amsterdam alone, including some famous ones like the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum).

Apart from saving money the pass also makes it possible to skip long ticket lines.

Answer 2

Jokew has a good tip, the Museumjaarkaart, but you will need more.

A good site with lots of info is this:

http://www.amsterdam.info/

There are many hotels in town, the trick is to find one you can afford, which has the comfort you want and still is in a good location.

I think you should use a hotel search site.

If you look at a map of Amsterdam you will notice a ring of canals. Any place one or within the ring is great, as is the area just to the south and west of the ring. (The south western edge of the rings is where you will find several of the famous museums and lots of entertainment at night.)

This map is a useful one: http://www.amsterdam.info/map/ zoom out once and you will see the ring of canals.

The only area you might want to miss is the Red light district, also because decent hotels also avoid that area.

It is a little hard to explain where it is, I think you will have to check the evaluations of the hotels by other users.

It is part of the area within the ring, but not all of it. The other half of that central part is a very good place to stay.

You can find a lot of good eating in Amsterdam for prices that compete with that of McDonalds.

The area around the Leidsestraat and Leidseplein has many small restaurants, and the Zeedijk, between Nieuwmarkt and the Central station has a lot too. (But this is next to the area you will not want your hotel to be.)

A famous dinner in the Netherlands is an Indonesian Chinese Ricetable (Rijsttafel in Dutch) available in each of the many restaurants of this cuisine. It is like a buffet with a lot of choice, often served at your table.

Tours are the thing you might want to give a miss.

Most of the Netherlands is within easy reach by train and there are so many options that you will not miss tours.

If you ask again, or even addd to this question, we can point out several good day trips, or you can search in the resolved questions as they do come around rather often.

Museums,

If you do not buy that museum year ticket, (see the other answer) you can still skip the lines of people waiting by buying timed tickets.

They are available for several of the most popular museums.

The first site I linked to has a good museum listing, with links to the sites of most of the museums. On those sites you can often find an online ticket option:

http://www.amsterdam.info/museums/

And as you mention Starbucks, the best place to sit down for a drink is one of the many corner cafes. (Not always on a corner, but often they are.) The coffee is not guarantied to be of the best kind, but often is, the experience is typical Dutch.

Or find yourself a pastry bakery with a small section of tables.

You will be spoiled of choice of pastry and cakes. You will not be pleased with the Starbucks brownies after that.

Shopping is all over the center of Amsterdam, and the same site has a whole section devoted to it, I am sure you can find that without a direct link.

(I have nothing to do with that site, I just think it has the info more tourists need.)

Added after reading your addition:

The reason not to stay in the Red Light District is that decent hotels will not be there. But they will be scattered all over the rest of the town.

After reading your bit about shopping, I think you might enjoy the P C Hooft straat:

http://www.pchooftstraat.nl/homepage.htm

Or maybe more the area called the nine streets:

http://www.theninestreets.com/

If neither site shows the kind of places you will want to shop, it is because I did not know what you want, not because it is not in town. I am sure your favorite magazine will have done a special about shopping in Amsterdam, look that up and see what is where.

Or catch a train to the Hague or Rotterdam and do your shopping there.

The reason I did advice not to take the tours was that you asked for advice considering the dollar is not what it used to be. I think that skipping the tours out of town is not going to hurt your experience but is going to save your purse.

Living near Amsterdam I do not really do city tours nor the 'lets see the countryside near Amsterdam' kind of tours. The only kind I do sometimes do are the canalboat tours, there are many different ones, a lot near the Centraal station.

Very popular are also the tours by bikes, you will find them all over town.

There are many tours out of town, if you prefer a tour you can choose any of those, but I think it will also be fun just to hop on the train and see one of the other towns in the Netherlands, no need to take a tour for that.

If you have a good guidebook they will also point out several of the better restaurants, but as your budget is clearly way above mine, I can not give you info there. I prefer the smaller places which offer much for little money.

But whatever you will end up doing, I am sure you will enjoy it.

Answer 3

My recommendation is to have an awesome time ... I am soooo jealous ...

Ill edit  

Answer 4

If you are architecture-loving you might want to consider staying in Rotterdam and visit there the Huis Sonneveld (more info on www.nai.nl) There are several nice hotels in amsterdam (hotelpincoffs.nl) is a new design hotel with reasonable prices, hotel stroom is built in an old electricity site (stroomrotterdam.nl) or you could stay in the hotel bazaar (bazarrotterdam.nl) which is more budget travel.

It's only one hour by train to Amsterdam and public transport is safe. You will experience the real Netherlands and will get more value for money, and don't worry : everyone in Rotterdam speaks English apparently they have 600000 tourists a year.