My wife and I are planning a trip to Amsrterdam this coming Sept. We will be able to stay there for abour eight days. Our plan is to rent a small apartment rather than stay in a hotel. We’ve looked on line at a number of rentals in various parts of the city.
My question is what part of the city would you stay in? What’s the safest areas or areas to avoid? We won’t have a car so we’ll be walking or public transportation.
We are so looking forward to this trip to what appears to be a beautiful city.
Thanks
If you want to be within walking distance of the places you’ll be visiting, you should stay anywhere in the central part of the city, where the canals are. We stayed on Spuistraat, and never had to take transportation at all. If your feet get sore you can always rent a bicycle.
The “Jordaan” is a teensy bit further out from where Panache is talking about, but it’s a very nice neighborhood. The part that you might want to avoid (not dangerous per se but maybe a bit something something) is in “De Wallen”-- the area roughly SE of the station/Nicholas church around the Oude Kerk and south of there. It’s an eminently walkable town-- a car would be completely useless. Lots of trams all over. For rental apartments the decent prices will probably be in the outer canal areas and in the neighborhoods just beyond. I’d look west, SW and south.
Lovely city, but a royal pain to drive around in the canal district [no parking to speak of, tiny little streets, and all sorts of odd one ways. The canal district is like driving on a spider web. Try to get on the outskirts, and walk a lot.
The people tend to be pretty friendly, and there are some really nice little cafes scattered all over the area.
The resendential area around the Van Gogh Museum is beautiful, as is the area out by Vondelpark…
I can not imagine the nightmare that driving/parking in central Amsterdam would be (at least for me).
Enjoy your visit!!!
The inner city (including the red light district) is pretty much as safe as it can be at any time of the day. I’ve lived in and near Amsterdam for over 10 years and I’ve been robbed once and that was over 10 years ago in the Bijlmer at 3 in the morning. But the Bijlmer is way out at the south-eastern edge of the city and is mostly housing and office buildings so not very interesting to tourists. It’s also cleaned up a bit in the mean time. And even back then, I’d lived in the Bijlmer for over 2 years and most parts of it were pretty much safe at least during the day.
Pick a location somewhere between Westerpark, De Baarsjes, De Pijp and Oosterpark and you can easily walk almost anywhere interesting. Further out, you’d definitely need a bike to get around, the scenery gets generally less interesting and some of the neighborhoods might not be very good.
ETA: I wouldn’t pick any place on or really near the Rembrandtplein or Leidseplein - too much drunken noise (and probably expensive too).
Actually we stayed at the CitizenM on the outskirts of town, it was rather quiet except for the idiot who caused a false fire alarm at 2 am by trying to smoke in his room. You could stay there, and take a cab in and walk in the canal district which is what one of us did. Amazingly comfortable bed.