Outward journey London Liverpool Street to Harwich and Hook of Holland cancelled owing to industrial action. Arrangements revised as follows: Depart Hoverspeed terminal, Victoria Coach Station, London 09:30 for Dover. Depart Dover by 12:30 Jetfoil to Calais. Arrive Calais Hoverport at 14:05 and board coach to Amsterdam arriving at 20:10. Stay six nights at Hotel Amsterdam De Roode Leeuw.

Its roots dating back to the 15th century and located on Damrak, just off Dam Square in the heart of Amsterdam, Hotel Amsterdam De Roode Leeuw opened in 1911 and is one of the few remaining privately-owned hotels in the city.
There's something about Amsterdam that puts strangers immediately at ease: rather like the relaxed atmosphere of a house where no-one bothers to hide anything away before visitors arrive. Down the centuries the city has welcomed all-comers from the Jews to the Huguenots, the Indonesians to the Hippies of the Sixties, letting them do their own thing. Because Amsterdammers like to do their own thing. In the streets, on the canals, in Dam Square, there's always something to make you smile: a hungry artist at a herring stall, canvas underarm, taking his lunch by the tail and downing it raw, barrel-organs, bicycles, trams, the music-box chimes of the Munt Tower bells, old men who have Rembrandt faces. Was that a barge full of cats?
More like a village than a city, compact and colourful. Amsterdam's pleasures are spilled out like trinkets on a tray. Many more, it's true, may have to be sought out - the Begijnhof or the old masters in the Rijksmuseum - but to capture the spirit of the place all you need do is sit outside the Hoppe bar in the Spui, a coffee or genever in hand, and watch the world go by. For in Amsterdam it will.