Boltin' About
"Tales from yet another traveller"
Hotel in Amsterdam
Hotel Jolly Carlton, Amsterdam
After looking at different hotels of varying standards and quality, we had to decide on a hotel in Amsterdam. The first choice was a hotel very close to the Amsterdam city centre, which had some good reviews, was a 3 star hotel in Amsterdam, and seemed to be perfect. However on further inspection of websites that contain reviews of the Hotels in Amsterdam, we noticed a couple of odd things. Visitors from certain countries, such as England and Scotland rated the hotel highly saying that it was clean, polite and helpful staff etc. and well postioned hotel, and they wrote mostly positive reviews. However there were some Amsterdam Hotel reviews mostly from visitors from medierranean countries that consistently complained about the cleanliness and the quality of service from the Amsterdam Hotel staff. One can draw one's own conclusion from that.
Anyway, having book the first hotel, it was decided that we should make a change and book a room in a hotel that was considered a good quality and recommended by other friends we had planned to meet in Amsterdam.
The Hotel Jolly Carlton, Amsterdam
On arrival at the hotel, the staff were helpful,the belboy did all that he was expected to do, arranging to bring our luggage up to the room. He did not hang around mentioning "tips" or anything. I think he understood that we were not the wealthy businessman types, so there were no embarrassing moments before he left. Later, we looked around the room and noticed a faint smoking smell as if the room, which was a non-smoking room, had nevertheless been a smokers paradise in the past when smokers were a more acceptable part of society. The room itself was was nice enough, it was large, but oddly shaped. The wooden panels in the room make it looked darker than was perhaps necessary with the limited amount of light that entered through the window.
Hotel facilities
The room had a small kettle, large enough to boil water for a "cuppa", but more importantly we were able to use it as a "bain-marie" to heat milk for our 1 year old son. That worked well. The staff at the Hotel in Amsterdam also proved a cot/play pen, that the little boy was happy to romp around in.
The breakfast area was quite welcoming. Hotel Jolly is run with a dominance of italian speaking staff - this was the downfall of the hotel. On arrival at the breakfast room, we asked for a high chair for a one year old (since we didn't want to have him on our knees all the time while we had breakfast). The italian barman (barrista italiano) said that there was nothing available. There was. He was just too lazy to go upstairs (in the lift - he didn't even have to take the stairs) and fetch it. It took his more service minded Dutch colleague to notice the problem that we had with him go up and get it. This is the difference between Customer service italian style and Dutch style.
