Today I publish a letter from a student named Dave, who has recently traveled to Amsterdam with some of his friends.“I went to Amsterdam with a group of friends to spend a couple of days. We wanted a cheap Amsterdam hotel or a room in a hostel, as we were traveling on budget. The most important thing was the hotel’s central location. Our choice was Hotel Manofa, a 1-star budget hotel. We didn’t expect anything special from such cheap Amsterdam accommodation. Four of us stayed in a 4-bed-room which was about EUR 27 per night: it was probably the cheapest Amsterdam hotel we could find anywhere in Amsterdam. Anyway, it was definitely better than sharing a room with 20 strangers in a hostel somewhere in the suburbs.

What people are afraid of when staying in cheap hotel rooms? Probably, they are afraid of mice, rats and bedbugs. There were no mice, no rats and no bed bugs in Hotel Manofa. Of course, our room was really small and old, but the linen was sort of clean and our towels were changed every day. The window of our room faced onto another hotel, but that didn’t matter as we were not going to sit in front of the window watching Amsterdam: we were just a group of young men wanting to have fun, so the hotel choice was not bad at all!

I can’t comment on the food as there were lots of nice places for snacks and coffee and some other kind of eateries on the main street of Manofa.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend Hotel Manofa in Amsterdam for people traveling with kids or business travelers, but the hotel is OK for students traveling on the cheap.”