Let me share some new information on reaching the HGI by bus/ public transport, from central Leiden. There is a new bus service, and the bus stop has been moved to the actual entrance of HGI. All great news.

FROM: Leiden Centraal Station, which is served directly by frequent Intercity express trains (>4/h) and ‘Sprinter’ stop-at-all-stops trains from Amsterdam downtown, Schiphol Airport, Haarlem, den Haag Centraal, den Haag HS and down-the-line Rotterdam.

LOCATION OF HOTEL: The hotel, and the neighbouring Corpus ‘museum’, are physically in Oestgeest village adjoining Leiden. But that plot of land of the hotel and Corpus is de facto an extension of the spacious Leiden University park to the west of the central station, up to the A44 highway. On other side of which, through ample and proper wide-open underpasses, is the HGI. As the crow flies, it’s about 2 klix from downtown Leiden.

BUS STOP LOCATION: The 4 (5) buses an hour to HGI daytime, 1/h early morning and evenings, depart from the bus station in the forecourt of the railway station. This is on the city side, east of the tracks. Locals call it the ‘front’ (“voor”) side. From the hotel to town, returning, they drop you off there. The rail station concourse under all the rail tracks opens on the city side onto a ‘plain’, bus stops on your right. About 26m from station exit to bus stops. The actual bus stop for each departure varies, and is indicated on a big illuminated panel outside the station. The traditional bus 37 varies; the new line 10 is scheduled to leave from bus stop ‘G’.

TRADITIONAL BUS LINE 37/ FREQUENCIES: The traditional bus is line 37, and is headed for Katwijk, a beachy duney old fishing village at the original North Sea mouth of the Rhine, Roman-era. Long before Katwijk is the HGI stop, about 9 minutes ride. It runs 1x an hour til about 23:00. In rush hours (around 7-9 and 16-17) it runs 2x/h. Departs at 48 (and extra at 18). It might stop on the west (back – “achter”) side of the rail station too, but don’t count on it (is handier for platforms 6 7 8 ish). Pay to driver, or more cheaply with a Public Transport ‘OV-kaart’ which works on all public transport (‘OV’) nationwide. Sold at zillions of places, including the newspaper shop in station concourse, and all over Schiphol station. At full fare, a ride will be around 1 EUR.

NEW BUS LINE 10/ FREQUENCIES. New since August 2018, and on a one-year trial, line 10 is dubbed ‘OV Museumlijn’ and runs a figure of eight all day long past half a dozen museums in the city, including Corpus. The top half of the ‘8’ is its western loop from the station to Naturalis Museum, and Corpus – which shares its stop with HGI. It runs 3x an hour, departure Leiden Centraal station around 13, 33 and 53. Heading for ‘Corpus’. Returns from HGI at 05, 25 and 45. Last loop around 16:30 – it officially runs to museum opening hours, 7 days a week. Is a regular OV bus, small-size, very PMR accessible and loads of space. Takes normal OV-kaart (~ 1 EUR), see above, or a branded ticket. About 5 minute ride from station. Its turn-around stop at the top of the loop, and its schedule ‘buffer’, is the HGI-Corpus stop, so it normally sits there a few minutes. The driver can see people scuttling the 34 metres from the hotel front door to the bus stop, and will thus wait.

ALL IN ALL, A REAL BOON.

I shall be happy to try to advise any real HGI client or staff on these buses. Just tell the management how helpful I was. ;-)

Of course, check for service switches or road works. At the national OV service 9292.nl (a wacky and wobbly website), or the actual nice people at 0900-9292 (a paid call). The bus company with the contracts to operate lines 37 and 10 is called Arriva. The staff at the local Arriva service number have never knowingly told a porky and are v helpful. The hotel can help you find that number.

My perspective in writing this is to encourage more riders on line 37 and especially line 10, which ticks all my boxes, so that it stays available for me. Deal? As a mobile-challenged, visually-impaired passenger, I cannot have a bus service go bad on me. And I do want to get to – and sadly leave – the HGI hassle-free. From that POV, I can add that the delightful railway service staff (blue uniform, red hats) have a central Information kiosk in the concourse at the entrance to platform 1-3, from where they will accompany anyone in need to wherever in the station. Their tribe is at all sizeable stations. Angels on rails.


DON’T WANT TO MEET PEOPLE and LEARN THE COUNTRY? If you’re unused to the true splendour of public transport which we have in NL, sure, taxis are available from the railway station forecourt. Cost about E11-14. The taxi rank is more difficult to reach than the bus stops. Bad signage and a slippery slope up. Furthermore, on arrival, the hotel entrance is 11 metres from where the taxis stop, and only 34 metres from the new Very Convenient bus stop. The bus drivers are to a woman/man very decent folk. The taxi gang assigned to that Leiden rank would win my LifeLong Prize for the Taxi Rank with Most Attitude in all-Benelux, and together with the operators (sic) at Amsterdam station, they get the taxi profession a bad name.

Posted 19 November 2018

Leiden / Hilton Garden Inn / buses / Line 37 / Line 10 / OV-Museumlijn / Leiden Centraal /