We visited Amsterdam as a treat from my partner just before Christmas. We stayed at the Grand because it IS soo convinent right in front of Dam Square. And very easy to walk to from the Train Station.

We were given a big room that face the side street off Dam Sqaure. The room is spacious & comfirtable. Reasonable modern deco (but don't expect chic Minmalist deco) thick velvet curtains & nice King Size Bed.....with a pair of complimentry ear plug on the pillow. That was suspicious & sure enough when we came back late in the night. The noise on the street are unbearable. The window turn out to be single glazed with some ventilation grilles. Unfortunately the room face onto the road leading to the Red Light District. So the merry o' sound of drunken party goers lasted all night.

Mind you the hotel was very accomodating (they obviously expected it) and allow us to switch room to one facing the rear looking out onto back yard. Although the room was smaller & now a Queen size bed with no view. It was much quieter & we settle down for nice sleep the next night.

The Winter Garden only do Breakfast & it close quite early for Amsterdam (10am I believe) so we did not manage to catch it as late risers. But there are plenty of nice cafe around the area. We enjoyed the Cafe next to the old church which is now Amsterdam Museum. We had fun when they had a fire drill & locked all the clientel inside the cafe, while the staff run around like headless chicken.

Do be careful when walking on the pavement in Amsterdam. They have complicated designated cycle path & the locals bomb along these with little or no consideration for the pedestrian (may be only tourist walk in this city, & they deserve to be run down?) My partner happen to be hit by 1 of these maniac & he just dust himself off & got on the bike & went right away. Not very friendly.

My partner and I booked a weekend away in Amsterdam. We selected the Grand Kransnapolsky because it had an excellent location in the centre of town.

The hotel itself was lovely, however, upon check in they asked for a credit card as a guarantee - which is normal practice in hotels. The hotel then took an authorisation for 700E from my account which means that they hold the funds incase you want to charge to your room. Normally hotels will take the equivalent of the first night's accommodation which would be £150 and many of them only check the funds are there they don't proceed to hold them.

Due to the fact no one had told me that they were doing this I was unable to access any funds during my stay as they had charged £300 for my room and on top of that held the 700E totally alomst £900.

As I was unaware that they would do this I thought that someone was fraudulantly using my bank card so I cancelled it and reported it to my bank. So please beware and find out what amount of money they are going to take out of your account. Personally I think holding £700 - £500 incase we wanted to charge to our room was excessive.

We booked the NH Schiller for our stay 17-19 Feb but on the 12th were informed due to renovations we were being moved to the Krasnapolsky (which we did not mind).

We arrived at approx 1030 and attempted to check in, were told rooms were being cleaned but try again in an hour or so which we did and saw same receptionist who seemed a bit cagey and told us to come back at 3, which we did only to be told we didn't actually have a room and had to go to the Schiller - needless to say i was a little annoyed at this stage (we had been travelling since 3am !) and vented my rage a bit and demanded a free taxi to the Schiller - at this she disappeared then told me we could stay here amongst lots of apologies - we were just happy to get to a room, which was nothing special at all !!! They did send a bottle of wine to our room to apologise further which we greatly appreciated. However the next day we happened to call back to our room at about 1pm to recieve a call asking us to check out ! I explained we were booked in for 2 nights and was told to come to reception as our keys would no longer work ! Saw the same girl as day before and she was mortified we were being hassled again and gave us free breakfast for the 2 nights to apologise - by this stage i gave up any chance of a relaxing weekend away and was just waiting for the next thing

Well at about 7pm whilst getting ready for dinner, the concierge arrived to 'help us move rooms' to which i simply laughed said wrong room and shut the door - told the girl the next day and she was mortified so i hope its not the norm

It is a nice hotel but for me it just was not worth the hassle even though we got the compensation freebies - i'd rather have just had a nice relaxing stay !

I won't be using NH again

The hotel is ABSOLUTELY not five star.The lobby and dining areas are above average but the bedrooms.are way too small,virtually no closet space,and what's up with those heating pipes banging and groaning all night long.Good thing we brought ear plugs....Great location but not enough to sell me for our next trip to beautiful Amsterdam........