RIO Hoofddorp in Hoofddorp

I spent a week at the Hilton and really appreciated the Axis Lobby & Cocktail Bar! This lobby bar is stunning! The staff is very friendly and go out of their way to make you feel welcomed. Like when I needed a cookie with my drink or added tasty hard apply cider after another patron introduced it to me! I especially want to say how Thijs, the bartender, made me amazingly tasty cocktails and introduced me to fruity elderflower tonic water with 1689, a mild Dutch pink gin! Martini time was always fun as the patrons as well as staff are from all over the world and provided great evening chats! Now, if I could only buy 1689 Dutch pink gin in the states because there was no duty free store at the airport!! Oh, and the TV and very comfortable seating were a nice perk!

The worst experience I've ever had in a restaurant or bar was here. I ordered poffertjes and was given a buzzer with my order number, which I promptly took to the counter and paid for (along with a bottle of water). I'm not in the habit of taking receipts because I've never really needed them before, but on this occasion I wish I did because I found plastic in the food, and the staff were incredibly disrespectful. It was a small piece of hard white plastic inside one of the mini pancakes. I felt it in my mouth and spat it out. I was so shocked by it I didn't think to take a photo, and instead went straight back to the collection point to show the lady who served the food. She took the piece of plastic and threw it away, and what followed was an absolutely awful experience. She offered to remake the order, but by that point I was completely put off the food so I asked for a refund instead. After explaining to me that the plastic could not have come from the bottle of pancake mix - which may very well be true but was irrelevant because the plastic was very much real and ended up in my mouth - I followed her to the cashier and after a brief exchange there, I was told a refund isn't possible without a receipt. I showed her the transaction in my banking app, which for some reason showed up as being from Starbucks (to be completely clear, I don't go to Starbucks so this is not a case of me getting transactions confused - this was the second of only two payments I made in the entire airport and they were about 30 minutes apart). I paid €13.40 for the poffertjes and a bottle of water. She insisted that a receipt was necessary, which I might have understood and accepted had I not been treated like a lying scumbag. It only got worse after that when she proceeded to accuse me of not paying and told me multiple times I needed to pay for the water!! I was in complete disbelief. It was exasperating and embarrassing. She did fetch the manager when she realised I wasn't just going to pay a second time and leave. The manager was far more reasonable and I had a calm, respectful conversation with her just as should have happened in the first place. She gave me a drink and some mini stroopwafels as an alternative to a refund, and I did consider leaving a slightly higher rating because of that, but the whole experience was far more stressful and upsetting than it was worth. Not a nice note to end my first trip to the Netherlands on.