Our Cool Budget Hotel in Amsterdam

We arrived comfortably in Amsterdam at about 12:20 this afternoon from Barcelona. The weather was a bit more like we would expect in Seattle this time of year - kind of grey and cool, with highs probably in the low 40's at most. Oh well, gotta expect that, right? We are in Northern Europe in January afterall!

Jim found an amazing new hotel that has been designed for budget travelers. It's called Qbic Hotel and it's about 15 minutes away from the city by train, and the station is right around the corner. It's actually located in the Amsterdam World Trade Center complex and occupies about 4 floors in the building. You can check yourself in if it's after hours, but since we were here mid afternoon, a very helpful and nice guy was working in the lobby and got us all set up. As you can see from the pictures, it's pretty sleek and modern design inside but the innovative thing is the bed and bathroom are basically a one piece "cube" inside the room with some basic furnishings in the rest of the room. Apparently the guy who started this is hoping to grow the idea since I guess it doesn't cost much to create rooms like this. I guess they must bring the cubes into the room and assemble them on sight. You can change teh colors of the lighting in the room to refect your room and the view is out onto the courtyard of the WTC.

Now, what you may have noticed by now from the picture is that there is no door on the bathroom, which is right behind the bed. Exactly........that's what we thought when we first walked in but then we thought, no we can make this work - especially for about the equivalent of $60 a night! So the new rule of the house while we're here is that if one of us has to go to the bathroom to......well, you know......then the other person has put in his earphones and listen to music until the other person gives the all clear. Ahh, the things we do for love........