Amsterdam Festivals: Gay Pride

Dutch Hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts can be hard to find in Holland’s biggest city during this colourful celebration of gay, lesbian and bisexual culture.

Back in 2000, I learned a valuable lesson about booking accommodation in advance. It was my first day of an interrailing trip through Europe, and we had arrived in Amsterdam after a torturous ferry journey from Hull to Zeebrugge, a long, hot walk to Zeebrugge train station and a seemingly endless rail journey to Holland’s biggest city.

We arrived, assuming that it would be easy enough to find some budget accommodation just by using our guidebook’s recommendations and maps. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to have any spare beds, and it was getting rather late.

We must have walked for miles between dot on the map to dot on the map, our backpacks now beginning to seem like they contained a couple of elephants each. And then a group of ‘flamboyantly-dressed’ (ie. Nearly naked) men came round the corner to give us a clue as to where our problems lay.

“Let’s go get some arse!” one of them, in a fetching sailor’s cap, screeched at a frightening decibel level. We had arrived in the middle of one of the biggest of all Amsterdam festivals: Gay Pride. This colourful celebration of gay, lesbian and bisexual culture is one giant party, going for the whole weekend in early August, and people from around the world come to join the party. This means that the city is stretched for accommodation, so beds fill up, prices go up and those arriving late in the evening looking to just saunter into a hotel or a hostel may end up with a very nasty surprise.

We eventually found a little bed and breakfast, but ended up paying through the nose for it – not ideal for the first day of a month-long trip on a small budget.

The 2007 Gay Pride Festival runs from August 3rd to August 5th – be warned.