I’m relatively new to the world of boutique hotels. Never knew there was such a thing 2 years ago.  But I’m going to go out on a limb and call the CitizenM the most innovative, and futuristic hotel on the planet.

So, due to a heathrow airport fumble, on the way to Thailand from London I had to stay the night in Amsterdam. This sounds like a good thing, if you wanted to get out in the city and chill at a coffee shop and such. Which actually was a fantastic idea that was right-on-time, until I stood clueless at the train-ticket kiosk for 10 minutes. I had no idea where to buy the ticket to.  I knew there were a bunch of coffee shops in the red-light district, but there was not a map in sight that made it obvious ‘where’ the red-light district was.  And yeah, coffee is code for marijuana, by the way. Oh well, “just say NO” right.

Sleeping in the airport would’ve been a great option had the flight to Thailand left in the morning. However since it left in the evening, I couldn’t make myself sleep in the airport, hang-around all day bored out of my mind, only to get on a plane for another 8 hours. Straight torture.

I was on a mission to find a reasonable accommodation after the coffee-shop bust. A huge plus was that I still had time on my data sim card for my iPhone, which was set to expire in a few hours. So I used it to check booking.com to view reviews and prices. The first place I checked was the Ramada, it was actually attached to the airport.  So I goes to the front desk and they said 300 euros (close to $400). F that.

I then read more reviews and learnt (Yeah, how you like that British-English) about a place just 400 meters away. It was called the citizenM hotel. The price was like 120 euros. They had vacancy. I was game.

I get to this place and it’s like I stepped into a night-club and not a hotel. You enter thru these translucent red doors. The first thing you see is a bar-area.  There is a collection of iMac’s for guests to use off to the side.  The checkin was all done by self serve kiosk. Kinda cool. I hop on the elevator and get to my room. And the room was the most interesting and unorthodox I had ever seen for a hotel room. I must say that I was impressed. I was kind of sad that I was only staying there for one night. This place was just that dope.