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Get in Amsterdam
By plane
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is huge - so when leaving Amsterdam, give
yourself enough time to get to your plane! A 15-minute train ride will
get you from the airport to downtown Amsterdam for about 4 euro. If you
take a taxi to or from the airport, be prepared to pay high fares.
Easyjet (http://www.easyjet.com) and other low-cost carriers have
flights to and from Schiphol, providing a fairly economical way to
city-hop to Amsterdam from other spots in Europe.
If you decided to bring your bicycle on the plane with you, there is a
15-kilometer bike path that starts at the airport and leads directly to
Amsterdam. Turn right as you leave the airport terminal. The path starts
at about 200 metres down the road.
By train
Most trains arrive and depart from Amsterdam Centraal Station (with one
extra 'a' in Dutch), located between the old centre and the IJ
waterfront. Other train stations are Bijlmer, Amstel, Muiderpoort (all
southeast), RAI, Zuid WTC (both south), Lelylaan and Sloterdijk (both
west). Schiphol airport also has its own train station, with at least
seven trains an hour to Amsterdam Centraal, with additional ones going
to other Amsterdam stations. Tickets can be bought from machines in the
station: to encourage you to use the machines, it costs 50 cent extra to
buy a ticket at the ticket counters. Older machines are not in English
and as such can be difficult to interpret. New machines come with a
language selection, and support English, Dutch, French and German. You
can see how these new machines look online at
http://webdemo.ns.nl/e2000.html. All trains in the west of the
Netherlands are operated by the Nederlandse Spoorwegen
(http://www.ns.nl
) (NS, "Dutch Railways"). On the Dutch railways website
there are pages in English
International tickets are available at the travel agency near the
westernmost station entrance of Amsterdam Central Station. The machines
sell tickets to nearby destinations in Belgium and Germany.
By bus
Most international bus services are affiliated to Eurolines, which has a
terminal at Amstel Station (train station and metro station). One bus
per day is usually the maximum frequency on these routes. There are
other international bus services, but they are often aimed at very
specific markets, e.g. Polish migrant workers. There are almost no
long-distance internal bus services in the Netherlands, and none to
Amsterdam.
By car
The western part of the Netherlands has a dense network of highways, of
which a number lead to Amsterdam. Coming from the east (Germany), the A1
leads directly to Amsterdam, and the A12 goes to Utrecht and Arnhem, at
Utrecht you can change to the A2 direction North. From the south
(Belgium), the A2 goes to Amsterdam and the A27 has a connection to the
A2. From The Hague, the A4 leads to Amsterdam.
The A1, A2, A4 and (from the north) A7/A8 lead to the beltway/ring road
around Amsterdam, the A10. From this highway, many main roads lead
radially into Amsterdam (the roads S101 through S118).
Note that the speed limit on Dutch highways is 120 km/h and on some
highways 100 or even 80 km/h. These limits are strictly enforced and
there are many speed cameras...
From: www.wikipedia.org
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