Amsterdam

Transport in Amsterdam

Travelling to Amsterdam

Amsterdam is well connected by air, rail and road. When you arrive at Schiphol Airport there’s a very convenient train service with the city.  The main station Amsterdam Centraal is served every 10 minutes. oakley outlet Rail tickets will cost you about €5 one-way.

By foot or by bike

The city of Amsterdam is rather small, and most of it can be travelled by foot. Most locals drive a bike as it’s the fastest way of getting around. Please take care when crossing red asphalt: Those are the bike lanes in between sidewalks and lanes for motorized traffic.

With public transport

Public transport is efficient. You can buy 1-day, 2-day, …7-day tickets or go for a combination with Airport train. If you extend your stay for some sight seeing, the I Amsterdam card may be good choice. It saves you money and a lot of time for not having to wait in lines.

 

Staying at Amsterdam

For hotels we suggest you to look for hotels downtown or east side. There are two hotels not so close (half an hour walking to downtown) that we would prefer to sleep ourself: Lloyd Hotel in former Eastern ray ban outlet Docklands (use bookingcode scratch2015AMS for fake ray bans a discount) and Volkshotel, the former headquarters of a Dutch Newspaper.

With University of Amsterdam we agreed on a special rate  for beds in Stayokay hostel, which is kind of in-between.

Campground Zeeburg is conveniently located on the East side and their cabins are much cheaper than hotels.

Further to the East you can sleep in amazing artworks (check out the video coverage) at €85 for two: Urban Campsite Amsterdam.

As an alternative to a hotel you could check the sites offering apartments like Wimdu and Airbnb ( Amsterdam is the first city worldwide to have a deal with AirBnB on tourist tax).

We will try to find host families for people on a very tight budget. Or you can check out if people want to exchange with your house.

 

Activities in Amsterdam

We expect you to be pretty busy during conference hours. But when coming from far it’s definitely worth to extend your stay with some days. Good to know: The last minute ticket shop sells tickets half price for events the same day.

We especially recommend the following:

  • The Pianola Museum is a wonderful small museum where Intellectual you see and hear automatic pianos that are about  a century old. They have concerts, among them un-playable piano pieces.
  • Stedelijk Museum  has expositions on Zero and Matisse in August: zero: let us explore the stars and the oasis of matisse.
  • The Van Gogh museum has interesting Friday Nights, we asked them if some of us can perform Friday 14th.
  • The Royal Concertgebouw is one of the best concert halls in the world, famous for its exceptional acoustic and varied program. During the conference you can hear Mariza on Wednesday and enjoy the works of minimal composer Einaudi  while laying on the floor on Saturday.

And if you’re into something else, we have:

  • a cat museum
  • a dependance of Leningrad Hermitage
  • a <a title="Joods Historisch Museum" href="http://www.jhm.nl/english" Cheap NFL Jerseys target=”_blank”>Jewish museum with one of the best children museums in the world
  • <a title="Nemo ray ban outlet Science Center” href=”http://www.e-nemo.nl/en/” target=”_blank”>Nemo Science Center
  • the Rijksmuseum
  • free ferries crossing the water to Amsterdam North which can be combined with a nice walk on the other side

The week after Scratch conference the city will be flooded by people heading for Sail 2015.

Check out the I Amsterdam pages for much more.