nk15

So BA moved my AMS flight to the day before, lol...Good thing that I have build a "layover" of 1.5 days between my two separate tickets in AMS....still works...how did I know that dealing with BA and AMS I needed a 1.5 day layover...

dharps

Kind of a piggy-back question - I have at 10.5 hour layover in Amsterdam on a Thursday in April and we wanted to go to Keukenhof and maybe Rijksmuseum if time. We'll be en route from US to Lisbon, so non-Schengen to Schengen.

Can we access the non-Schengen lounge on arrival to freshen up? Is there somewhere we can leave carry-on bags - I read on KLM website that there are lockers there? If we do leave bags in the non-Schengen lounge, would we have issues going back to pick up bags from there if our onward flight is Schengen?

Thanks!!

terrier

You will not have time to go to both the Keukenhof (which is not in Amsterdam) and the Rijksmuseum (which very much is) in one day, much less during a layover. Pick one, and plan ahead either way. Note that there's a major Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum that will be going on in April - buy your tickets in advance or be disappointed on the day.

You can try; as long as you're on a fully-business class itinerary you should be fine - but if it's busy you might be told you need to go to the Schengen lounge instead. When I was there during the security meltdowns earlier this year, the staff were turning away anyone not strictly entitled to entry - no day passes.

Note that both the Schengen (lounge 25) and non-Schengen (lounge 52) offer showers. You should probably reserve the shower in advance: https://lounge.klm.com/client/common/lounge_selection

Don't leave your bags anywhere in the non-schengen zone. Best case, you'll have to go through passport control twice to retrieve them, which will dramatically cut into your time.

If I were you I'd go through transit passport control (i.e. enter Schengen), clean up in lounge 25, and then leave the airport. Supposedly lounge 25 has lockers, according to their map (https://lounge.klm.com/client/lounge25/home) - but I couldn't tell you if that is really true. I don't think there are any airside "public" baggage lockers in the Schengen side of the airport, but there are some before security in Departures 1.

dharps

Thanks so much terrier! This is exactly the info we needed to plan out our layover.