Just came back from spending four days in Amsterdam - we booked the Alexanders Apartments because there was a group of us traveling and we wanted to have our own base in the city and something a bit different than a hotel. It cost us approx €750 for three nights from Thursday to Sunday (3 nights).

When we arrived on Thursday morning we made our way to the Apartment - the outside of this particular building was a bit rough looking (the Alexanders Apartments are located in several different buildings across Amsterdam), these particular apartments were located over a closed-down bakery which is covered in graffiti. We were meet by Melanie - who showed us to our apratment on the second floor... the entrance hall and stairs was fairly dirty- rubbish and leaves had obviously blown in from the street and the paint was peeling. The Apartment we were shown was not featured on their website and was off a much lower standard than those shown. It was quite an old apartment, with dirty blue carpet and chipped walls. The kitchen and bathroom were quite new - it was the bedrooms really which let this property down. The beds were old, the furniture was old and rickety and despite booking for seven people the apartment had just two double bedrooms and one tiny single bedroom.. (which had a pile of dirty laundry in it!) which meant that four people were expected to sleep in one double room - two on folding beds.

We were obviously fairly disappointed - we are all 24/25 yr olds, used to travelling and staying in 2 star accomodation throughout Europe - we weren't expecting the Ritz but we were fairly annoyed to be shown an Apartment which was of a much lower standard than that depicted on their web-site. We were told by Melanie that there was "another reason" why that particular apartment didn't feature on their website.. but I would have my doubts!! However, what could have been a bit of a disaster was soon righted - we voiced our concerns to Melanie who was very polite, helpful and lovely to deal with. She said that there was an apartment downstairs which had three proper double rooms and after she checked that it was available we were shown that Apartment - which was much better laid out - (smaller kitchen and bathroom) but bigger rooms, freshly painted and had bright wooden floors. This Apartment was quite nice - and Melanie was very helpful - she even cleaned the apartment as it had not yet been done and when we returned a few hours later the apartment had been cleaned and the stairs hoovered and so on. After our initial hiccup we had a nice time in our clean and functional apartment - however, be warned.. there is quite a difference in standard (but not price!) between some of their Apartments!!