John B wrote:

Overall, not a bad PT experience on either side of the Channel - and as
usual, the weakest link was the plane. The card experience was
frustrating, though: do UK ticket machines treat foreign cards as
ineptly as the Dutch machines do?

I don't know, but my experience of the Schiphol machines is that you
sometimes have to try again if you pull your card out too quickly, as
that's when the strip is read.

The Centraal machines do not accept any UK credit cards, so far as I'm
aware, and only accept Maestro (not Visa) debit cards. This is the
same throughout .nl, except Schiphol (which could trip up a lot of
people).

Neil