Ah Amsterdam. This beautiful city really did steal my heart a little bit. From the canals to the fairy lights, the city really does feel a little magical.
As students, holidays come with a tight budget, something my friend and I experienced for the first time in Sweden a couple of years ago (you can read about that here). On that trip, we discovered two things: £250 is a great budget, and 3 days is the perfect length of time to explore a city. Having flitted between many places in Europe we finally settled on Amsterdam. With the challenge of replicating our successful holiday-on-budget blueprint, we travelled to The Netherlands for 3 days in the second week of January 2019, to escape our responsibilities before our final term of university started.
The best bit?
In this 3-part blog series I hope to give you an insight into what we got up to, so you too can travel to Amsterdam whilst on a budget, covering everything from travel and accommodation, to food and activities. In the first part of the series, I'm talking about travel and accommodation - from how to decide on your destination for your budget holiday, to the beautiful budget hotel we discovered.
The best bit?
We only spent £200!
In this 3-part blog series I hope to give you an insight into what we got up to, so you too can travel to Amsterdam whilst on a budget, covering everything from travel and accommodation, to food and activities. In the first part of the series, I'm talking about travel and accommodation - from how to decide on your destination for your budget holiday, to the beautiful budget hotel we discovered.
What really influenced our destination of choice was travel costs. Over around 2 months, we flitted between Prague, Cologne, and even Moldova, before settling on Amsterdam (somewhere both cheap to fly to, and stay at). To help us find the best place to travel to, we kept an eye on Ryan Air's website, as well as SkyScanner, which allowed us to compare the costs of flights to lots of different locations. We ended up using EasyJet, because the new bag restrictions with Ryan Air made them more expensive, which resulted in my friend sending me countless articles about the many failings of Ryan Air in glee.
The other part of travel (which we did not look into properly) was transport to and from the airport. Once we got our heads around their train system when we arrived, we bought our tickets and off we went (GoogleMaps was a life saver - as it was for basically the whole trip!)
The other part of travel (which we did not look into properly) was transport to and from the airport. Once we got our heads around their train system when we arrived, we bought our tickets and off we went (GoogleMaps was a life saver - as it was for basically the whole trip!)
The other where to sort out was our accommodation...
As students, we get 10% off various travel websites with websites such as UniDays, so ended up booking through Expedia. We have so far avoided using Hostels (mainly cause I don’t think our parents are massively keen on the idea, and neither am I to be honest) and have found some great budget hotels so far. We finally came across a chain of hotels called The Student Hotel. There are two in Amsterdam, and we were at the West one. These hotels are very modern, and set up slightly like how a Student Hub is presented in films and on TV. We paid for the cheapest room, but were upgraded when we arrived (no idea why) so ended up with a kitchenette, which we would have made more use of had we known! The hotel offers breakfast, but as continental isn’t our favourite, they are €8 per day, and dietary restrictions left little to eat, we popped into Lidl on our walk over and picked up pastries, ginger bread and bananas to act as a much cheaper breakfast (they cost €3 total!). The room was gorgeous, as was the bathroom, and I would recommend them to anyone travelling, student or not (we did spy some older guests there). I mean, they even gave us Stroopwafels when we arrived AND sometimes have bikes available for hire!
The hotel staff were super helpful, and sold us our transport cards (€12 for 48 hours) which were so useful (unlimited travel on trams and the metro!) and made working out the transport system so much easier. One thing to note is that they didn’t cover buses, which we got caught out on – make sure you know what’s covered!
Finally, our hotel was right by a direct metro into town, the M50. We didn't realise this when we booked it, but it was such a great, and convenient, bonus. Can you tell I quite liked this place?
The one ‘downside’ is that they don’t have any twin beds, so if you’re travelling with a friend and you’re not up for sharing a bed to further reduce the cost of the hotel, then the price will go up a smidge.
Cost Breakdown
Accommodation: £40.75/€46.53
48 hour metro and underground ticket: £10.95/€12.50
Bus Ticket: £2.80/€3.20
Train from Schiphol airport to city: £2.80/€3.20
Train from city to Schiphol airport: £2.80/€3.20
City Tax paid upon arrival to hotel: £5.09/€5.81
Total: £98.40/€112.36
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of my Amsterdam-on-a-budget series. Once all three have been uploaded, I will post links to them below:
Food
Activities
Have you ever been to Amsterdam? How did you get there and where did you stay?
June xx


























