Travel
Amsterdam
44
BY Ryan Salazar
Amsterdam: Beyond the IBC
Don't simply get lost in the IBC Exhibit floor; get out and explore the sights in Amsterdam!
IBC 2014 in Amsterdam this year features the conference in the month of September from the 11th to the 15th and exhibits from the 12th to the 16th. Although the IBC show is a wonder to behold, what’s the point of having a conference in an exotic and/or famous and/or historic locale if you don’t take a little time to admire the local sites and scenes? The Netherlands has tons of history and neat things to do but in the interest of maximizing our IBC time, lets confine our ‘extracurricular’ activities to Amsterdam, shall we?
First, you’ll need a hotel (unless you’re staying with friends or relatives of course, a cheap and potentially uncomfortable arrangement). The advantage of a hotel near the IBC is an easy commute, but if you locate your base of operations a little further away you can absorb a bit more of the local color and atmosphere. Amsterdam boasts lodging in a wildly divergent range of prices. If you really want to save some green so you can spend more elsewhere, you might consider “The Flying Pig Uptown Hostel” (no I’m not kidding that’s the actual name). And if traveling in a group, you might be able to get a room that only has your personnel in it.
If a hostel isn’t your speed (or Jane your Broadcast Engineer snores like a freight train), then you can up the ante to individual rooms at a hotel. Amsterdam has well over 1000 hotels, so finding lodging shouldn’t be that arduous. With several weeks of warning time before the event, acquiring a hotel from a favored discount site should be fairly easy. The Amsterdam Hilton runs just a little over 200 a night. Wandering back into cheaper territory, you might consider Hotel Iron Horse in the 80 to 90 dollar range. True, it’s only a 3-star hotel, but it’s clean and functional and if all you’re planning to do there is sleep, then how fancy does it really need to be?
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As stunning on the inside as it is on the outside!
The EYE...
Broadcast Beat Magazine / Sep-Dec, 2014