Every time I find it difficult to think of what we can do best when we travel by plane. Park the car at the airport? Going to the airport by train or let your family take you away, for example?
We have already tried different ways, during different flying holidays and I would like to take you through our experiences from parking when we fly with the whole family to whether or not by car to the airport when I travel alone.
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When I still lived at home and I went on holiday with a friend, my parents liked to take me away when I went flying. So parking was no problem. But as you get older and start a family of your own, the chances are less that you still have someone close to you who wants to take you to Schiphol. Especially not if you live under den Bosch yourself 😉 .
In addition, you also have to call on someone and of course you have to want that. Anyway, we no longer do that ourselves, so for us it is the choice to go by car or take the train.
I have often traveled alone. Mostly press trips where I was not completely alone, but I mean alone without the rest of my family 😉 . In those cases I only went by car to Schiphol to park there and then join the rest of the travel group. You often travel in the middle of the night, so I had to park my car somewhere near the airport in the middle of the night.
At Schiphol itself you can choose short or long-term parking, but those prices will skyrocket if you're not careful. An advantage is that you can drive to the airport at your own time and that you can also go home when you have arrived and have collected your suitcase.
Short parking is only interesting if you take someone away and want to go inside for a while, because you can only park in this parking lot for 48 hours. Not an option if you are going on a flight for a few days to a few weeks.
Are you going to long-term parking you pay quite a bit of money (between € 50 and € 100.00 for 1 to 2 weeks) and you still have to take the bus transfer to the airport itself. That will certainly take another 15-20 minutes from the long-term parking lot; I don't find it very comfortable myself.
Another -often cheaper- solution than parking your car at the airport itself is parking at a parking provider's site. They are often located just outside the city, about 10-15 minutes from the airport. In fact, it is comparable to long-term parking at Schiphol, but on the site of another provider. As mentioned, this is usually a bit cheaper and another advantage is that you will be taken to the departure hall with a (free) shuttle. Sometimes you are on the road even shorter than if you park at Schiphol itself. This also applies to other airports.
Valet Parking is a somewhat different way of parking. Admittedly, it might be just as exciting to hand over your car keys. But now this way of parking is becoming more and more common and I can tell you, it's fantastic!
When Frank and I went on a cruise together, we parked our car this way for the first time. It's like parking at Schiphol, but just a bit more customer-friendly. You meet with the parking provider at the departure hall, fill in a form, take your luggage from your trunk, hand over your keys and you can walk straight to your gate. Ideal! When you return, call when you are waiting at the collection belt and before you leave your car is already there waiting for you with someone from the parking provider. You check whether everything is in order, sign the papers and you are on your way home again.
As far as I'm concerned, this way of parking at the airport is really the best. Then it is only important that you can also trust the parking provider. Now we had an address through a friend of ours, but if you have no experience yet, you can take a look at the Parkos website.
At Parkos you can see at a glance which reliable parking providers are available (shuttle parking or valet parking at the airport) for the moment you want to use their services. You enter the airport from which you depart, the date of departure and arrival and within a second you will see more than enough choices with all the associated information from the parking provider.
That is of course also an option; not by car but by train to Schiphol. The big disadvantage of this is that you have to adapt to the travel times of the train and that there is not always running in the middle of the night. There are night trains to Randstad, but not from Den Bosch, for example. In addition, I would first have to take the car to the city, get on the train there and only then be on my way.
Apart from the times that are not always convenient, there is one big advantage… you get off at Schiphol. If you travel alone, the train is probably also slightly cheaper, but if we go with the family, I will soon pay more than € 50.00 for a single journey for the family, well…
The most advantageous is to have yourself taken away, but you do not want (or cannot) appeal to someone, then there are only a few choices left. You go by train, or you park your car. In our opinion, parking the car is not only more favorable in terms of rate, but also much nicer.
