Hello folks,

My previous holiday plans for Amsterdam have been altered slightly due to problems my friend had in getting time off work. As a result we're going later in October but have decided to spend an extra night (we're also going to beautiful Belgium for a few days now too! :o) ).

Anyway, while we're still spending most of the time at the Sphinx Hotel, our first night is at the Inner Amsterdam hostel which I understand is roughly 2.8km from Centraal Station. While I have no particular objections with getting a taxi (other than the extortionate prices the drivers charge, no doubt for those plasma screens and bass systems almost every car is kitted out with) I was wondering whether it would be any great hassle in getting a tram? Does anybody know which tram we'd need to get? Also, with it likely being around 10:30pm before we manage to get into central Amsterdam, how busy are the trams at this time and how difficult will it be to lug our luggage onto the tram? If it is too difficult we'll just split a taxi but I'm going to try and space out my spending so I don't want a chunk of my first nights cash bitten out before I even hit a coffeeshop if possible!

Similarly, will there be any difficulty using the tram the next morning to get from Inner Amsterdam to the Sphinx, or will we once again need to rely on a taxi?

And finally (sorry, I'm going on), are there any decent coffeeshops within a 15min walking distance of Inner Amsterdam?

Many thanks for reading this, and any responses appreciated!

This web site is really valuable. Its not in English, sorry, but basicly its like Mapquest for public transportation systems in Holland. Its pretty good; it includes city trams and the railway system, so you could figureout what you needed to do to get from, say Den Haag to Amsterdam or whatever. Just punch in the address of your Hostel and Centraal and you should be able to find out the tram you want to take.

http://www.9292ov.nl/

Oh, and there are a gazillion coffee shops ofcourse. All the tourists go to ones like Bulldog and Grasshopper, but I like the smaller ones myself. You'll see ;)


Blake
American living in Rotterdam.

Cheers for the link, I'll check it out.

I know there's a lot of coffeeshops in Amsterdam but I'm after those closest to the hostel. I don't like wandering around foreign cities at night, particularly if the streets are relatively deserted and I'm stoned and the last time we were in Amsterdam we stayed at another hotel (a little out of the centre) and we had to walk a good thirty minutes before we found a coffeeshop. We probably missed a couple but neither of us knew our way around the city so we just had to see what we came across. I'd rather get a few names and directions of some before we go.