It turned out that a friend from pre-Covid Esri UK days was going to be working in Rotterdam the day I was passing through, so we arranged a meeting spot which turned out to be really easy to find; The big statue of a woman outside Rotterdam Centraal Station.
Getting there turned out to be easier & harder than anticipated. There were works occurring on the line to central Rotterdam, so the metro didn’t go all the way there. Fortunately, one of the tram options passed right by where I needed to be, so after a spot of googling to figure out the tram number, I got a slightly easier travel experience. ( I’d been planning to navigate from the metro to Centraal, but … No need )
It was fun wandering around & catching up, seeing a bit of a different area of Rotterdam than what I saw last time, and hearing about what Esri Netherlands is like as a company.
We did take a selfie, but I look terrible in it, so I’m not posting it
Confusion struck when I went to get a train to Amsterdam, because it was stopping at The Hague due to signal issues. The nice people at the information desk suggested a few options, the easiest one being a train going through Amsterdam & continuing on, so no change required.
The trains between cities operate the same way as metro trains; Tag on & tag off, which meant no trying to figure out on peak or off peak. There is a first & second class system, and a supplement that you have to pay for specific direct trains; The latter you tag a pole on the platform, and I’ve no idea how first class works, I just made sure not to sit in that section.
I’m in a 4 bed dorm in a hostel (ClinkNOORD) in North Amsterdam, so there’s a ferry (free) which runs across to in front of Amsterdam Centraal Station; It’s basically a roll-on roll-off for bikes & passengers, and there are a couple of them constantly going back & forth. One of the other inhabitants is another New Zealander, who checked in at the same time as me and is on the first stop of a year in Europe. He was very jetlagged.
I did a bit of wandering around, partly to get a sense of the location, but also to not be hanging around in the dorm trying to sleep too early. Turns out everyone else in the room was in bed & lights out by a bit after 9, which was a bit unexpected.
