Spent the day traveling to Amsterdam on planes and trains.
Above pic is from waiting at the Budapest airport for a flight to Zurich, Switzerland.
The Budapest Ferihegy airport is modern and quaint at the same time. Most flights will require you to take a bus from the terminal to the plane itself, like in the following picture. I used Helvetica Airlines which was nothing spectacular, but nothing to complain about either.
The airport in Zurich was extremely quiet and extremely well run and clean.
It also has smoking sections sponsored by every major tobacco company (and brand) on the planet in every corner, which I thought was a rare sight. It also had really pretty views outside of the windows which I couldn’t quite capture. But I was able to catch the landscape just after we took off:
This was from a Swiss Airlines flight. And I must say, I was super impressed with Swiss Air. Especially the design of the seats, check this out:
Sexy, Svelte, Minimalist Design. I love how they moved the bulky magazine pocket above and cut away the bottom for more leg room. The tray table design is genius. Also notice how slim the seats are giving you more room to breathe in general. And for relatively short flights, it was still quite comfortable to sit in.
Made it to Amsterdam and walked a long, long, long, long, long, long, way to the arrivals area. It’s a damn big airport. I was already tired from being up at 5AM so I wasn’t ready for walking… or thinking.
Getting a train ticket is a pain in the ass. The machines are in English, but you can’t pay with cash, unless it is coins, and you can’t get any cash unless you buy something from a nearby shop at an overblown price, and you can’t pay with any normal credit card unless you tack on a fee (and American Express is not usable), I ended up using a Wells Fargo debit card as credit and luckily it accepted it.
And then there was no one around to give any information. Just boards and signs in Dutch and some English. Finding the platform to Amsterdam Centraal station was difficult enough for me to end up on the wrong train.
In fact, I did get on the wrong train. I always get on the wrong effing train. Every damn time I come to a new country I end up on the wrong train. Then 15 minutes into the ride, I get the sinking feeling of (oh. crap.) and get off at the next stop. Luckily, the people working on the trains get off at every stop and look for morons like me who need help. Not only was the train person incredibly friendly (and speaking perfect English), he was able to look up the fastest possible way to get where I wanted to go within seconds by looking it up on a Windows Mobile powered device (that all employees were carrying). No iPhone app for that yet, I assume 
Finally made it to Amsterdam Centraal and then walked around looking for a tram I am supposed to take to get to Rembrantplein (Rembrandt Square). Some embarassing questions and actions later, I made it there. And then I had a map which looked nothing like my surroundings. Some British guy was also confused at his map and asked me where he was. Luckily, a homeless guy knew were we were and exchanged his directions in hope of getting money.
I only had Hungarian Forint on me. He wouldn’t accept. Had he known I was offering him 5 EUR in Forint, he may have changed his mind. He wouldn’t take the 20 cents I had either. He wanted paper bills. I thought beggars can’t be choosers? Whatever, now he knows which hotel that tourist that wouldn’t pay him is staying at.
(the last events were all in effort of saving about 30 Euros, by not taking a taxi… worth it?)
I got to the hotel, checked in, room looks like this:
and this:
Was too tired to go out and just wanted sleep so I could start a relatively early next day. Ate at the hotel bar which had surprisingly good food. Then I hung out in the lobby for their free internet (which blocks twitter.com for some reason) and wondered why everyone was literally running through the lobby at 11PM. Must be a busy night.
Went back up to the room and noticed that when you turn all the lights off, there is this cute thing behind the bed.
Cute, but I turned that off too
Good night!
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