Rooms and doors of Centraal Station
Hotels around the station are busy at every hour, which suits a discreet visitor very well. Lobbies are staffed through the night, travellers with suitcases come and go at two in the morning, and nobody at the desk looks twice at a well-dressed woman walking toward the lifts. The rooms themselves vary. Older buildings along Prins Hendrikkade have small, oddly shaped rooms under sloping roofs, sometimes with a view straight over the water. Newer hotels on the IJ side are larger and quieter, with double glazing that keeps out the sound of the trains. Short-stay apartments above the shops of Damrak and the Nieuwendijk are often reached by a narrow private staircase that begins right beside a shop window. Many readers here arrive on a late train or a night flight and book within an hour of dropping their bags.
