Travel snippets from Europe

My wife, Debby, and I are on an 18-month tour of Europe, and we wanted to share some travel snippets with fellow ITN readers. 

• On April 12, 2016, we flew from Dallas/Forth Worth to London’s Heathrow Airport. Flying American Airlines in first class, shortly before we landed we were given a little ticket to fill out that enabled us to skip the Immigration line at Heathrow.

• Our round-trip first-class flight ended up costing us very little because in 2014 we had gotten American Airlines Citi^®/AAdvantage^® Platinum Select^® credit cards, one for Debby, one for me and one for our business. 

We had to charge a few thousand dollars on each card over three months, and there is an annual fee of, I think, $95. Each card came with 50,000 frequent-flyer miles, so we acquired a total 150,000 miles. (As of May 2016, someone who qualified still could earn 30,000 miles per card upon signing up.)

We used 130,000 of those miles this year for our two first-class, one-way tickets, having to pay only $11 each for taxes and fees. 

We canceled the business card after a year but still have the others, with which we’re accumulating miles to put toward our return flight from Europe, sometime in 2017.

• If you’re foolishly traveling with several large suitcases and traversing a rail station to reach another train, the best way to manage your suitcases is with a bungee cord wrapped around the top and bottom, linking them together in pairs. Two suitcases become one, and you can then maneuver them across the platform. 

Alternatively, hire a porter, if there is one. (When we passed through the Brussels, Belgium, rail station at 2 p.m. on a Thursday, we never saw one.)

• Upon arriving in the Netherlands at the Amsterdam Centraal Station, as you exit from the trains area you’ll see the Service Center on the right. We found the people there very helpful. You can buy train tickets and get any travel information you need. Most Amsterdammers speak English.

It’s also a good idea to exchange currency there. Throughout the city, there are ATMs at ING banks, but to be set up with travel cash at the start, it’s more convenient to get it at the Service Center.

And you’ll need to have plenty of cash for your trip if you’re doing your own cooking. During our stay in Amsterdam, we visited five or six food stores and one of the large markets. They all required cash and wouldn’t accept US credit cards. Most of the restaurants we visited did take credit cards. 

We found our American Express cards very difficult to use in most stores in Amsterdam. MasterCard and Visa were a bit better. Cash is king here.

• If you want to get around Amsterdam cheaply using public transport, buy a “chip card,” officially called the OV-chipkaart, also available at the Service Center in the Centraal Station. The cards can be used on buses, trams and the metro. You top them up with cash, and on every trip you swipe them going on and off the transport. Don’t forget to swipe. You can lose all the value off a card if you do!

Start with around €30 (near $34) on the card. That will be good for roughly a week of travel within the city if you’re visiting 10 attractions. You can see how much is left on your card if you look at the little window on the machine as you swipe it when you get off a tram or bus.

• A global positioning system (GPS) is useful in Amsterdam even if you don’t have a car. It will give you tram, train, metro, bus and walking directions to places of interest. For example, it will give you a route to walk for five minutes, then show you where to take a tram and walk to a bus for the final part of the journey. 

We use the Google Maps GPS app, which is carried by most smartphones. (The cell phone we’re using is a Samsung Galaxy Note5.) Open the app, enter the address you want to go to, and it gives you both written and spoken instructions on where to go. It’s an amazing tool.

• T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com) offers great cell service for travelers in Europe. We signed up for the Simple Choice plan. Our Wi-Fi calls to and from the US are free, and our calls anywhere within Europe cost 20¢ a minute. Data and text are free as well. In addition, we have found T-Mobile to have great customer service.

• Keukenhof Gardens, near Amsterdam, are a “must see.” There are about 80 acres of tulip gardens of all colors and sizes arranged in architectural patterns. It’s truly a tranquil and spiritual experience. Late April was a good time to visit this year, and we got lucky with the weather, with the sun out all day long. Check the forecast before you go.

A useful newsletter called “Tulips in Holland” (http://tulipsinholland.com) gives information on the “state of bloom” of the tulips at Keuken­hof and other Dutch locations. It comes out weekly in tulip season, which is April through May.

MYLES MELLOR

Contributing Editor