What would you do if you won the lottery? We play the lottery game frequently and right up there with a yacht (and crew of course) to sail the world  and a beach treehouse in Thailand, a houseboat in Amsterdam is always high on our long list of things to buy. It would be a nice break from the permanent beach lifestyle we would be living, and a place to have as a home base for our European summers. For our recent trip to Amsterdam, we decided to practice our lottery lifestyle by staying on one of most quintessential Amsterdam houseboats we could find.

There are several websites with houseboats to rent and we selected Amsterdam Book Now where a quaint one bedroom was available in the bed and breakfast Amsterdam style.  On what is now affectionately ‘our boat,’ our room is roughly one third of the boat, and the houseboat owner lives in the other two thirds.  On the wider canals, boats are typically double parked, so our houseboat is accessed by walking across another boat and then hopping onto our temporary home.  We anticipated some concessions in terms of creature comforts, something anyone who has spent time on “normal” boats would understand (very limited hot water, cramped quarters).  Luckily, most houseboats in Amsterdam are hooked into the city water, sewer and gas supply, so there is plenty of hot water for showers, drinkable tap water and it is well heated, which was especially important due to the near freezing temperatures over the weekend.