ou call an airline and ask for the roundtrip fare to Amsterdam. The operator throws a pair of dice and multiplies the result by the square root of her birthday. That's your airfare. (When I was moving here I asked for a one-way fare, and the lady at Northwest told me that would be over $1400. I said jeez, what's the roundtrip then? She said $650. I took that one, and just didn't show up for the return.)
Next you arrange for a place to stay. To do this, you take a week off from work to scan the 6.5 million results of Googling "amsterdam hotel" so you can make an informed decision. Let's see, you've got youth hostels like the one on Kloveniersburgwal. Cheap little places in the red light district like the Vijaya or the old Kabul hotel where I first stayed when I was 17. Lots of cozy old steep-staired hotels in various stages of modernization (where "modern" means your room has its own toilet with an actual door on it). Big chain hotels (Hilton, Marriott). Semi-luxurious 20th century hotels like the American in Leidseplein, or the "Old Tulip" (now NH City Centre) on Spuistraat, which has a damn good breakfast buffet. There's one big "Botel" floating in the harbor, and some ordinary houseboats that rent out rooms. And then there's the fabulous Amstel Hotel, where the queen stays when she's in town (and where Hermann Goering stayed when the queen was out of town). Here's a tip: if a hotel's street address ends in gracht, burgwal, or kade, that usually means it's on a canal (except for Vijzelgracht, Rozengracht and Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, which used to be canals until some idiot filled them in). But if you really want to see where a hotel is located, you just type its address into the search box at www.atlas.amsterdam.nl. If it shows up within the semicircular ringed part of the map, then it's right in the walkable heart of the city.
You choose a place and try to book a room there. Room rates and availability may be more favorable if your travel dates do not coincide with New Year's Eve, Queen's Day (end of April), the Gay Pride parade (early August), any big international convention at the RAI Congress Center (like IBC in September), or the Cannabis Cup in November. Nowadays a lot of people book hotel rooms online. But if you're so old fashioned as to telephone your hotel before you fly here, find out a few things. Can you check in early, if your flight arrives at 7 am? If not, can they at least hold your luggage while you wander the streets like a zombie for a few hours? What's the nearest tram line, and how far is it on foot? Also, write down your hotel's address on a slip of paper so you can show it to someone as you're trying to get there. Some street names are hard to pronounce.
Okay, your plane just landed. Wake up.
The airport sprawling to the southwest of Amsterdam is called Schiphol (sounds kinda like "skipple"). The name essentially means "ship hole." There was once a huge lake here, the Haarlemmermeer, famous for shipwrecks in bad weather. Schiphol today is an airport, train station, and shopping mall all in one. Its web site at www.schiphol.nl offers an online map of the arrival area .
Overseas flights usually land in the early morning, so except in summer it might still be dark outside the glass. You're kinda bleary-eyed cuz you didn't sleep well on the plane. You're wandering along with the crowd, things are mostly gray with lots of yellow signs. A disembodied voice keeps telling you to "mind your step" when you reach the end of a moving path (rollpad). Soon you come to Passport Control. Being from outside the European Union, you wait in the line marked Alle Passpoorten. A bored person in a booth checks your passport and, unless you're a wanted fugitive, waves you through. You continue down to baggage collection. Video monitors list which carousel has the bags for your flight.
Once you've got your bags, you go through customs. Take the green lane, marked Niets aan te geven / nothing to declare. The red lane is for people declaring stuff they're importing. Someone might stop you to examine your bags, but that's pretty rare. They pay more attention to flights from places like Suriname (a former Dutch colony) because a lot of Colombian cocaine comes through Paramaribo lately. (Expect a different welcome when you return to the States. Seeing a passenger from Amsterdam, US Customs agents secretly hope you're smuggling dope, cuz it will make their day if they catch you. If you're planning to do anything here that's illegal in America, do it all here, take a shower and don't bring any trace of it back with you.)
The green lane passage dumps you out into what is essentially a shopping mall, with snack bars, gift shops, magazine shops and even a little supermarket. Need a coffee? Yeah you deserve it. There's a coffee bar right there in the arrival hall. But first you need some euros, so you step up to the nearby change counter. Alternately you can use your ATM card at the adjacent money machine. There's more about money in the next section.
Ready to get the hell out of this airport?
Follow the Treinen signs out to the train station hall. Along one side you'll see train ticket counters (treinkaarten). Across from there you'll see revolving glass doors leading outside.
Taking a taxi. The taxi line is outside and across a small plaza from the train station hall. If you're tired and sporting big luggage, you may feel like springing for a taxi to your hotel. That could set you back EUR 40 or more depending on where it is and how you tip. You just walk over to the taxi line and queue up for the next cab. There's seldom much of a wait at all, because of the surplus of taxis in Amsterdam. If some guy accosts you in the plaza waving his hack license and offering you a cab, be aware he is breaking the rules. There's a line of cabbies over there patiently waiting for you to show up, and this guy's trying to steal their business. The polite thing to do is tell him to fuck off, walk the extra hundred feet and hire somebody who plays fair.
Your cab driver may or may not speak good English. Then again, you may or may not be able to pronounce the name of the street your hotel is on. If it's on the Damrak you're cool, but if you're going someplace like Eerste Constantijn Huygensstraat then you might wanna hand your driver that slip of paper with the address you wrote down.
Taking the train. It's much cheaper, and pretty darn easy, to catch a train from Schiphol to the center of town. Go to a ticket window and ask for a one-way to Amsterdam Centraal. As I write this in 2004, it costs EUR 3.20 for a class 2 ticket. While you're there, also buy a strippenkaart (sounds like "strip-a-cart") for EUR 6.40. This is the ticket you will use on the trams (streetcars). More on that later.
Check the yellow train schedule signs to find out what track (spoor) the next train to "Amsterdam CS" is leaving from. Find the stairway down to that track. Above the platform, a sign says which train is coming next. Wait till they list your train bound for "Amsterdam CS" then get on the next one that comes in. Direct trains to Amsterdam Centraal Station leave about every ten minutes. But other trains come through on the same track, so don't get on one that's bound for Berlin. The domestic Dutch train is yellow with big blue diagonal stripes on the loco. When it stops, push the button by the door to open it and step right in. The trains are twin-level seating, so you can either go down or upstairs to find a seat. The ride normally takes less than 20 minutes. Quiet minutes. The train is almost unnervingly silent, gliding along above a highway median before veering off among the office parks and corporate towers surrounding the city. Depending on which train you took, it may stop at other Amsterdam stations first. Intercity trains usually go nonstop to Centraal Station. Sneltreins (fast trains) are actually slower, cuz they stop at places like Amsterdam-Lelylaan and Amsterdam-Sloterdijk. Unless you have a real good 
reason, don't get off there. Stay on the train until you start to see some old buildings from the 1700s — then your next stop will be Amsterdam Centraal. Stepping off onto the platform at Centraal you'll find yourself under a great barrelvault of steel and skylight. You go downstairs, follow the passage out through the station hall, then go straight outside to Stationplein.
Welcome to Amsterdam. The place you're standing on used to be the mouth of the Amstel river. Cuypers' giant Centraal Station building is right behind you, the one the Calvinists complained about. What do you think of it? As I write this, they are building a subway tunnel right under the station for the new north-south metro line — so the front of the station is blocked off as a construction site. You'll probably emerge on the west side.
A wide bridge opposite the station leads into the Damrak, formerly the Amstel river, now a big street leading to the Dam. Many hotels are located nearby, so you may even be able to walk to yours. If not, there's a taxi line off to your right (a taxi from here is cheaper than from Schiphol), a metro station and bus stops at your left, and two sets of tram stops. The metro is a subway line running down the east side of town through Nieuwmarkt, Waterlooplein and Weesperplein and on out to the burbs. The trams are surface level electric streetcars running down the middle of major streets. The city is liberally crisscrossed with them, so if you're going anywhere in the Centrum, chances are a tram will take you near it. There are 16 tram lines, of which 11 lead right here to Centraal.
In a low white building across the street to the left, you'll find an office of the GVB, or Gemeente Vervoerbedrijf (municipal transit enterprise). There you can buy tickets for tram and metro, and find out which tram to take to this hotel or that museum. The GVB also has a web site www.gvb.nl with a section in English. In the same building there's an office of the VVV, or Vereniging voor Vreemdelingen Verkeer (literally, union for foreigners' traffic). VVV is there to help tourists. You can ask questions, get maps and brochures, and even get help finding a hotel.
Now that you're here, let's talk about how some things in Amsterdam work, including some things that might strike you as a little whacked.
