Basecamp Amsterdam — Hotel in Amsterdam

My partner and myself spend 2 night at The Unbound.

The overall experience was OK-ish, but we probably won’t be returning at our next visit to Amsterdam.

We arrived at 11 am. The room were not available until 3 pm, so we decided to rent a bike at the hotel to go to the center and grab a bite. The first surprise was that that the price to rent out a e-bike for 24 hours it will cost you €34. This is probably why they don’t list the prices on their website.

But we did rent an e-bike, but when we found the bike one of the pedals was missing. So we went back to reception to get another bike. Reception told us that was the only e-bike available and that she only could rent out normal bikes. We found it a little bit weird because there were a lot of e-bikes available, but these were only for “employee use”.

A little bit disappointed we rented normal bikes for €17 for 24 hours. These bikes were also in bad shape and looked badly maintained. When we set of we noticed that the chain jumped over the teeth of the sprocket. Now really disappointed we went back to reception once more and just canceled the bikes.

Later we went to the city and rented a scooter for €32 for 24 hours that was a lot better to commute from to hotel to the city center and back.

That brings us to another issue. To go to the city center you need to bike 35 minutes, walk 1 hour and 52 minutes or pay a Uber €27 one way. We were told by a friendlier, other receptioniste that we can take a train or tram to the city center, but that was not told by the person that (tried) to rent out the bikes.

The restaurant is OK. The menu is very-very limited. The Mac and Cheese was good, but served in a little iron pot that was cold. Which means that the food cooled down really fast. Quite pricy, for example a glass of water wil set you back €3.5.

The second day we had to go ourselfs to reception to get new towels because the receptionist misheard the room number a send new towels to the wrong room. We also found a long black hair in those towels.

You paid extra for the room with the (not so fancy) pizza oven? You can now pay an extra €12 for the wood. These oven are very small and will drop ashes on the pizza.

Now for the good parts:

The cabins have a good cooling/heating system.

The WIFI was fast, stable and free.

The rooms were overal clean.

Even though I would not call it a “rain shower” the shower was good.

The view out of the room was nice.

You can have a nice walk on the domain. (Also a nice dog walking over the domain is a bonus)

Next to the domain is a very nice farm market.

Overal we enjoyed our stay, but the negatives add up which means we probably wont...

I really enjoyed my stay here. I stayed in the lighthouse with the hot tub. The lighthouse is large and has a modern electric cooker and induction hob. It is easily enough space for four people with it's 2 large beds. We travelled just as a couple with a dog. It's very dog friendly and they are allowed everywhere without a fuss. They even put a dog bed in the room for you! It can be both very warm and cold with it's Aircon. It's a little noisey in the house but if you close all the doors you can ignore the noise. You can also open most window doors which in summer would be amazing! The hot tub is a little bit of a faff and they charge 40 euros for the to make it (although it's free the first day), I did pay as was out all day and it apparently takes 3 hours or more to heat. I hope the nice lady who did this gets paid well! There were cooking utensils etc to make pasta and most foods. If I come again for longer I would bring some extra pieces like tongs, spatula etc to make more foods. All the staff are helpful and the first lady checking us in also doing the fire was wonderful. The only thing we didn't have is the breakfast. This is because there was no hot option and cost 17.5euro. It did all look high quality for sure but with no hot options we opted for egg on toast we made ourselves. When you look at the other accomodations in the village, they looked cute but a bit small for us. I don't think I would go for anything other than the lighthouse if you are used to self catering accommodation...

Wonderful, but was/could be better. Let’s be clear, it’s a wonderful place set in beautiful grounds around a peaceful and calm lake and the strong original concept lives on in the architecture and landscape. However, it appears that there has been some change of ownership and a significant part of the concept has been lost. Most importantly, the restaurant has been closed with only a small selection of unhealthy ‘bar snacks’ available. I was recommended this place partly due to a wonderful restaurant serving fantastic food so you can imagine the shock when the receptionist told me that it’s permanently closed and that the nearest restaurant is a 35minute walk away. For accommodation at this price point and remote(ish) location having no real restaurant is a major issue. Also the spa was closed during my stay which was the other facility I was looking forward to using. The lake and barrel sauna are beautiful and I very much enjoyed them, except they too have a slight air of neglect and past glory - there are painted cabanas by the beach closed up that look like they used to be a bar or facility of some sort which would have given the beach a little more atmosphere and the swimming pontoon was covered in lots of bird Pooh which with a little clean every now and then would have been more appealing. Overall I had a wonderful stay, but it wasn’t as good as it...