Hi! I will be staying for the majority of the time in Austria (I am a Canadian/Austrian citizen). After a few days in Austria with family, I fly with Ryanair to London, where I will stay one night before heading up to Birmingham to stay with a friend for three or so days. I will then spend about four nights in London before heading off to Brussels for a weekend. After Brussels, I plan on visiting Amsterdam before heading off to Germany and then back to Austria to do a two month course to get my German language diploma and traveling to Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece and returning home.
What I’m looking for is basically:
1) a good youth-filled safe hostel in Amsterdam,
2) some great day tours in London and Amsterdam that run year round (the ones I’ve found does not run regularly in February), and
3) a good and decently priced tattoo place in Amsterdam (and would I need I.D. if I’m 17?)
Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated! =)
I stayed at the Hans Brinker hostel for about a week the first time I went to A’dam- lots of kids and I felt safe even in the dorms. But if you’re anti-dorms, I also have stayed at the Hotel Annemarie, which offers single rooms but has little youth presence.
Don’t try the christian youth hostel, it’s in the red light district and sucks ass.
I don’t have any experience with day tours, sorry-good luck!
1) safe is easy, youth-filled is hard
2) mikesbiketoursamsterdam.com/ is a good bike tour. It’s not strenuous…there aren’t any real hills there, plus they run year round.
As for exploring London, I’d recommend doing that on your own. It’s more fun and quite easy to do. The Tube and the buses are easy to navigate. There are also tourist lines/buses run by the city that go to most of the main sites. (5 pounds or dollars / day)
There are also some of the hop on/off buses run by other companies that are quite popular that stop by many of the main sites. They also play little tapes to give some information (20 pounds or dollars / day)
Or you can take a minibus tour run by a tour company online…most of these will cost 100 pounds or more.
If you’re interested in daytrips outside of London, I’ll have to look up the tour I took, but it was the cheapest I found that went to Stonehenge/Bath/Salisbury and a few other places. However, even in the middle of summer their tour selection was low due to reduced tourism (or so they say)
There are many options for London. I’d recommend picking up some pamphlets at the train station