night at the airport

If you had to pick an airport to spend the night in, Amsterdam Schipol wouldn't be a bad choice.

My flight from Rome landed at 11.30pm. My flight to San Francisco is at 11.10am tomorrow morning. I can't remember now what the options were when I booked travel for this trip, months ago. Some combination of every alternative either costing a lot more than the travel budget, or involving more stopovers in the US.

The airport is pretty much shut down. Just cleaners pushing mops around, skeleton staff at the 2 or 3 food outlets still open. Piano music over the PSA.

The lovely counter person at the panini bar showed me this lounge area where there are big curvy semi-reclining chairs, and workstations. She told me everything opens again at 2am: It's just like daytime.