Easy Living in Amsterdam's Easy Hotel

For my most recent trip to Europe, I stayed in 3 versions of the Easy Hotel, a no-nonsense kind of place with the most basic of rooms that are suited to those who don't spend much time in hotel rooms while traveling. I'd stayed in an Easy Hotel in London once before, and I found it clean and inexpensive enough. You want to watch TV at an Easy Hotel, you rent the remote control. Wif-fi access? That'll cost you, too. You want extra towels or your bed made? You pay extra for that. But, how many solo travelers need more than 2 towels or care about their bed being made?

The Amsterdam version had been open only a week or so when I arrived and was met by Charlie, a young Englishman who was taking a "break from university because I wanted to work." He let me know that as a sort of welcoming gift from Easy Hotel, I would have free television and wi-fi access for my entire stay. A nice touch. I'd find out that night that some of the movie channels in Amsterdam aren't quite the same as the ones I was accustomed to back home--a bit more, oh, graphic. Then again, maybe those channels are available on TVs in hotels all over the world and I'm just dumb enough not to have noticed.

I was proud of myself for having found the hotel in the first place. From the train station I'd taken tram line 25 into a new city, but I managed to get off at the correct stop and after a few wrong turns made my way to the hotel itself. Good for me. So, I was happy to get the key to my room, and even slightly amused when the key opened the door to a room that was already occupied. I think Charlie and I were both lucky that nobody was in the room. Charlie was quite apologetic, and soon enough I was in the right room and busy cancelling the credit card I thought I'd lost but would find shortly after getting off the phone with my bank.

Settled and eager to get outside again, I bid Charlie goodbye and began walking around Amsterdam. I walked as much as I could, trying to get oriented, and just before dark I found a restaurant called Der Pizza Kamer. The waitress/bartender told me that the menu was in Dutch and that she would translate, but "lasagna" seems to work in nearly any language and I ordered that with a glass of wine. The lasagna was fair; the wine was average; but I was happy to have actually gotten food and drink in a new place, a somewhat major accomplishment given my aversion to going into any kind of dining establishment alone.

The first day had been a good one: I'd encountered and solved a few problems along the way, and I'd found shelter and food. I was looking forward to an early morning and getting to the Van Gogh Museum.