I am well acquainted with Amsterdam airport and it’s fair to say that we don’t get on. I have had my luggage lost twice while travelling through there and on another occasion I was refused entry on a connecting flight because of overbooking. The latter was spectacularly unpleasant because I was heading home to donate bone marrow to my brother and I was not at my most patient. Things deteriorated when it was clear that the airport authorities didn’t believe my reason for travelling and I finally got on the plane by creating a huge disturbance which had an audience in three figures at its height. I think I was threatened with airport security. It doesn’t rank highly in my list of favourite places and I vowed after the last balls-up that I would never fly KLM again. Rather sadly, in the search for a weekend away, I discovered that my high moral stance could be bought. Not only that, the price was a measly fifty quid and a sensible flight time out of Heathrow on a Friday evening.
Schipol airport does serve as a suitable introduction to the Netherlands. This is because although it seems very big, no matter where you go you always feel cramped. The baggage reclaim at Amsterdam is situated in one of the biggest rooms I have ever seen but there is no space as the carousels are very close to each other. You have to push your way to the front as if it’s a Saturday afternoon in Primark and then it’s almost impossible to pick up your bag without smacking somebody else over the head. Thankfully my luggage did arrive though which, given my track record, I regarded as a small victory. I then had to force my way through the masses to escape. This was not helped by a brilliant bit of airport design which put the train ticket machines near the exits so you had push your way through the queues. I don’t know if you have read the novel “Puppet on a Chain” by Alistair Maclean. In the first chapter of it, one of the characters gets shot just after he lands at Schipol airport. In another of his books, “Floodgate”, a terrorist group threaten to flood the airport by blowing up various coastal defences. At first I thought that Maclean was inspired by the city but I’ve now come to the conclusion that he hated the airport as much as I do. One of the nicest things I can say about the place is that once you’re through passport control it is easy to find your way out of it. The railway station is under the airport and I waited under two minutes to get on a train to the city and paid seven times less than I did for covering the similar distance from Paddington to Heathrow.
I took an immediate dislike to Amsterdam but in fairness I imagine it’s hard to like any big city when you arrive into the centre of it at midnight on a Friday. There was large amount of building work going on opposite the central railway station and there were cranes everywhere. It was also surprisingly dark which was a bit of a worry because I had planned to walk the couple of miles to my hotel and I didn’t fancy an unplanned encounter with a canal.
My hotel was in what is called the “museum quarter” and it was a straightforward walk along the main road opposite the station. This road, Damrak, skirted the red light area (separated by a building site) and went past Dam Square. The walk took slightly longer than expected as I had to climb over stoned Hispanics and some wobbly looking British and Americans telling each other how wasted they were. There was a noticeable lack of Dutch being spoken and clearly the locals had sensibly abandoned the area and retreated back to the saner parts of the city. It was a grim walk alongside tatty shops and dirty streets but it felt good to be heading away from the city centre. As I turned towards my hotel the pavements cleared of casualties and general scruffiness and gave way to smarter bars and restaurants were there was some semblance of a normal night out going on.
The Arts Hotel is well named. It is situated directly across a canal from the Rijksmuseum and is in spitting distance of the museum devoted to Vincent Van Gogh. It was also open at one in the morning which was a huge relief to me as that was about the time I finally arrived there. It wasn’t particularly welcoming but I was too knackered to care. I didn’t know then that the easiest part of my journey had been completed and that the tricky bit was going to be getting from the reception to my room. There was no lift and I found myself staring at a near vertical staircase which each step having a width of about half of my feet. It was a perilous climb with a bag on my shoulder, trying my best not to over balance. At one stage I tilted over dangerously, hanging on to the handrail while one of my feet waved dangerously in the air trying to find a foothold. It was terrifying stuff; I’ve climbed up easier mountains. I paused when I reached the top, took in some oxygen and then swore and cursed that I had a room on the second floor and had to do it all again.
I would like to say that my room was worth the effort but even in my dazed state I could see that it wasn’t. It was a triumph of interior design in that it had a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a sink and a television and yet I could stand in the middle of it and touch all the walls. Cat swinging space was very much at a premium but then again, that could be said of the country as a whole. Thankfully the city was to stage a remarkable recovery in daylight.
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