Sir Adam

I worry we’re not cool enough for this hotel, and I say this as a modern, worldly-acquainted, meme-referencing millennial.

I’ll skip past the fact the lobby looks like an adults-only play centre – with pool and foosball tables, arcade machines, an open-concept all-night burger bar called the Butcher, a projector screen for movie nights – and start with our post check-in detour to the hotel’s record library. Our host – a musician by night – pulls a couple of old-school LPs from the black lacquered racks and says ‘I think you guys might like these tunes’ before chatting music with Mr Smith all the way to our room.

So far, so good, until I – to my embarrassment – ask: ‘Um, how do we operate the record player?’

He’s nice enough to not give me a you-mean-you-don’t-know scoff, and proceeds to give us helpful instructions on how to operate our own in-room Crosley Cruiser.

There’s a Gibson guitar hanging over our beds too, not that either of us know how to strum a chord, but if I was musically-inclined in any way, Sir Adam would be the hotel of my dreams.

Not that it isn’t, mind. The industrial-meets-nightclub décor is modern, fun, and executed with real class, deftly straddling the line between warehouse cool and home comfort with lashings of glass and concrete softened by tactile rugs, bold art and lighthearted touches. Flushed with floor-to-ceiling windows, our room has stunning panoramic views of the IJ river, which you have to cross by ferry to get to the city centre.

As well as its curated selection of records, trust Sir Adam to have a curated selection of in-room reads, too. I’m a sucker for new-age non-Lonely Planet travel guides like Cereal Magazine and Citix60’s series, so finding a copy of Lost in Amsterdam by my bedside was a welcome touch. (In fact, I later buy a copy from the hotel.)

Other winning details to note: a nice touch of brown leather (no less) on the pillowcases, and light-up messages engraved in the bathroom mirrors that differ from room to room (ours says ‘I got you babe’).

There’s plenty to do at Sir Adam, too. Mr Smith and I squeeze in a couple of pool sessions (I would have won, of course, but I magnanimously let him…) and, post-dinner, we grab drinks from the Butcher and catch the second half of Sweeney Todd playing on the projector. Given we’re in the A’dam Tower, there’s a 360-degree rooftop skydeck up top, and the Swing Over The Edge ride for daredevils. Not bad for a hotel on the ‘other’ side of the city.

Even if you’re not keen to take the ferry across the river, there’s plenty to do nearby. When in Amsterdam, you have to commute like the locals do: by bike. There’s a rental shop less than a minute away from the hotel’s entrance if you’re keen to cycle the city.

Besides biking, Mr Smith and I explore the arts and fashion district, De 9 Straatjes (the nine streets), and the tulip fields at Keukenhof before we have to bid farewell to Sir Adam.

Shortly after after checking out, though, I get a call, telling me I’ve left my passport behind – I’m never this forgetful!

I turn to Mr Smith and, instead of getting peeved, he looks at me with a smile and says, ‘I guess we’re heading back…’

Hand in his coat pocket to stave off the nasty wind, we board the ferry at Amsterdam Centraal once again and walk towards Sir Adam.

When we get to the hotel, of course we’re the first to arrive uninvited at their King’s Night (the national holiday to mark the birth of King Willem-Alexander) party. At reception I scream over the music ‘I’M HERE TO COLLECT MY PASSPORT’ (I mean, who screams that at a party?). We feel like kids at their first high-school social.

We wait patiently and watch the lobby fill up with party goers whose night is just beginning. We get the passport, which the lovely staff had placed in a safe for us, and leave the party.

Like I said: we’re not cool enough for this hotel. But it feels like home anyway.