We arrived at the Amigo Hotel and had to leave and go stay somewhere else. Upon first arriving you are greeted by some stairs that are literally vertical like a ladder (thank goodness we left our luggage at the train station) - all the stairs are like this and the hotel has many floors. We are fairly young (30's) and fit and we had serious problems getting up them! The guy at the front desk was very nice and tried to be accomodating, but he was the only nice thing about this place. The whole place reeked of smoke (of all kinds) and looked very dirty. When we got to the room (we had booked a four-bed room with a private bath) we weren't expecting too much but on seeing the bathroom decided we had to leave - it was miniscule with no separate shower - the shower head stuck out into the area in front of the toilet - so where you walked with your street shoes and went to the bathroom was basically the floor of the shower - yuck. Oh, and then the toilet wouldn't flush.

The location is actually really good, with some nice restaurants and bars right around the corner. And we are not picky - we had stayed in hostels all over Europe on our three week trip, but draw the line at dirty, smoky and dangerous (those stairs really could kill you, and I hate to think about what would happen if there was a fire there!)

It was really our fault for not researching the place more - but we do want to warn people NOT to stay here unless you are a bunch of guys who are 18 years old and just want to sit around and do drugs the whole time you are in Amsterdam!

The location of the hotel is nice; accross Artis and near public transport.
But the staff was not friendly, came knocking on our door during the night (???) and was not willing to give us towels. The room was dirty and there were holes in the curtains. The television did not work. The shower was so dirty that we didn't use it. Finally the breakfast was nothing and the second day we want to the bakery accross the street.