Six Hours in Amsterdam

Six hours is cutting it a little close, but if your plane arrives on time you can make a very short visit. Take the train from the airport to Centraal Station (20 minutes), walk down to Dam Square (5 minutes), check-out the Royal Palace, there might also be an interesting art exhibit next door at the New Church, walk up the red light district to Centraal Station, and head back to the airport.

seeing as how Amsterdam was where the latest attempted bomber boarded his flight to the US, I would expect screening delays to be lengthy even this summer. I read in the paper they're sending all international passengers thru their low-dose x-ray machine; they have exactly one at the moment. So you'll need to be at the airport 3 hours ahead of your flight, which means leaving Amsterdam 30 minutes earlier than that (assuming a train leaves the exact time you want it to), which means making your way to the train station at least 30 minutes before that. So now you have 2 hours left, but you still have to get off the airplane, put your bags somewhere, and catch a train into downtown Amsterdam (again, assuming the train is ready to leave just when you want it to). Your actual free time is likely to be quite small...

So IMHO its not feasible, but some would be willing to give it a try.

The security screenings will probably be a bit more thorough, but at Schipol the screenings for transatlantic flights are done at the gate instead of a centralized area. So as long as you can make it to the gate before the doors close on the airplane you should be good. Also there are trains to/from the airport every five minutes, so it's very rare to have to wait for one.

Thanks everyone, this is very helpful. Just my luck we are flying Northwest Airlines! I'll try to find out how much time security is taking. We might be safest to just stay in the airport!

Jan

This is actually very feasable. We did it with a 5 hour layover and had to get our luggage to the storage place first. The train to the city centre takes only 15-20 minutes. From the train station we walked along the canals to the Anne Frank Huis, stood in line for 30 minutes (these days you can prebook tickets and avoid the lines), saw the museum, had coffee at a nice place and went back.

We were in Schiphol just 3 weeks ago and there was no line-up whatsoever for security. The fastest we've seen in a long time.

The Van Gogh museum is worth it and not too large (Rijksmuseum is too big). I wouldn't do the canal trip unless what you really need is to sit down. But just wandering around and finding a cafe can be nice, too.