The boarding of the aircraft was a bit of a farce. “Jet2 operate a row by row boarding operation to minimize delay.” “You may now board the plane.” Whut?! I thought this was meant to be row by row? Ah well, the joy of boilerplate statements and a small passenger count. I ended up with an entire row to myself, which was fortunate given the leg room on offer. Sardines have it good compared to that flight.

The captain of the jet was obviously a fan of, or related to, Stirling Moss. I’ve flown a fair bit, but I’ve never flown with a pilot who decides to not stop and rev the engines on the tarmac. We belted along the tarmac, took a corner at speed, straightened up and he floored it. Quite fun really. He also had a sense of humour, referring to the oxygen masks as cures for bad breath!

The flight across was fairly painless, a few bumps here and there, but nothing bad. Just enough time for a cuppa, and we were descending into Schipol, and were treated to Stirling Moss racing towards the disembarkation point.

Schipol Airport – not much to say really, other than it’s really light and airy, and much nicer than some I’ve visited (airside of Philadelphia for international flights comes to mind). There’s a large train station right under the airport, and the kiosks that serve up tickets are bi-lingual. Thankfully, they also accept credit cards, so I was able to get my ticket down to Den Haag easily enough. There was probably a desk I could have gone to as well, but I learned later in Den Haag that they charge you 50 cents for the pleasure.

I’ve seen a few trains in my life, but I’ve never seen a split-level train. Ever. The main passenger trains in the Netherlands have two ‘floors’ of seats in each carriage, probably boosting the capacity by 80% (can’t be 100%, as the stairs etc occupy space). Very very cool train design.