My experience with Hotel Piet Hein was not good, and I do not recommend it.
When I checked in I was given ambiguous directions to my room. I left the luggage with my companion while I went to the back of the hotel, walked down a couple flights of stairs, walked around in those hallways, could not find my room, walked down another flight or two, looked around until I found my room in the back.
When I opened the door I could not believe what I was seeing. The head of the bed was pushed up against one wall, and the foot of the bed was pushed up against another. The phone was on a window sill on the other side of the bed, so the only way to use it was to crawl across the bed. There was no room for more than one carry-on size piece of luggage, and we had four, including two large pieces.
We tried putting the smallest of the two large cases on a luggage rack behind the door to the room, but then the door would not open enough for us to squeeze through it. I'm 5' 10" and 185 pounds, and my companion is less than 100 pounds, so our sizes were not the issue.
We had packed our cases hurriedly on the last day of our cruise, and were expecting to be able to sort things and repack, in the hotel, to be in compliance with airline regulations. There was no way to do that in this room.
I went to the desk to express my dissatisfaction and was met with indifference. The clerk said, "Our website says that it is a small room." "Small" is relative. My reservation confirmation says that the room is "comfortable." I told the clerk that whatever the room description, I expected it to be sufficiently large to accommodate us and our luggage. He shrugged it off. When I told him that I would be sure to let a few million people know what the Hotel Piet Hein means by "small," he shrugged again. Perhaps proximity to the museums guarantees them a full house, no matter how dissatisfied some guests may be.
After returning to the room, and confirming that it would be impossible to stay there, I went back to the desk to ask if any larger "standard" rooms were available. The answer was "No." By this time another hotel employee was on the scene. I asked her, "Do you have another economy room?" "Yes." I asked to see it.
It was on the same floor as the hotel desk -- just steps away -- and was considerably larger. My companion said, "We want this room." The clerk said, "Really?" I said, "Yes, this room is larger." She said, "Really?" We laughed about it latter, the way she kept saying "Really?" when she knew as well as we did that they had a better room available than the one they had tried to pawn off on us. My son and I had reserved two rooms months and months ago. Were they saving the better room for someone who just walked in off the street?
Before they agreed to let us change rooms we were asked "Did you wash your hands?" "Did you sit on the bed?" "Did you use the toilet?" It was like they were looking for the slightest excuse to refuse to let us change rooms.
After hauling our luggage back up from the lowest floor and into the larger room, I took a look at my credit card receipt. They had handed me a statement that corresponded with my reservation -- €316. But they had billed my credit card €382.93. I took both the hotel's printed statement and the credit card receipt back to the desk. Two clerks went to work on the problem, and repeatedly tried to tell me that I had been charged correctly. It was 30-45 minutes before they finally conceded what was an incontestable mistake, and issued a refund.
The room we moved to had space for our luggage, but little else. There was no closet -- only three hangers on a short rod, perpendicular (not parallel) to the wall, under a shelf that held the room safe -- so high that my companion could not use it. The bed seemed to slope, so I propped a pillow between me and the edge of the bed to keep from rolling off. My companion thought that one side of the mattress was thicker than the other. Shaving was a challenge; the lights in the bathroom were placed so that my head was blocking the light and I was shaving with my face in the shadows. There was no door on the shower so we used the hand spray instead of the overhead shower head, and still had to mop the floor before we could do anything else in the bathroom. When trying to pack to leave, the only place to put an open suitcase was on the foot of the bed, and when I leaned over the suitcase I kept hitting my head on the corner of the TV that was suspended over the bed.
I felt a chill between me and the hotel staff for the duration of my stay.The night before our departure we ask the hotel to have a taxi for us at 7:30 AM. The driver showed up at 7:00, saying that the hotel had told him to arrive at 7:00. Perhaps to the dismay of the Hotel Piet Hein, he was a nice guy and did not charge us for the 30-minute wait.
Conclusion: If you are traveling alone, have only one carry-on case, and don't need to shave, you may find the Hotel Piet Hein tolerable. read more