One of the upsides to being based in Europe … is how close so much of Europe is to the casual traveler.

In the United States, a 90-minute flight from Los Angeles would not be sufficient to get to Portland, Oregon.

In Europe, a 90-minute flight from the south of France, a few miles from the Mediterranean, puts you in the Netherlands, on the North Sea. In some ways, a world away.

It makes a person consider how easy it is to get to many of the more attractive/interesting destinations on the continent.

We landed at Rotterdam, for reasons of a cheaper airfare, and took a bus to the train station and the train to Amsterdam, the heart of the country.

This time of year, Amsterdam looks particularly inviting. In addition to its cultural offerings, as well as a population adept in English, it is significant cooler than the south of France. Which can be a bit too toasty in August.

It was well into the 80s when we left Montpellier. It was in the low 70s when we pulled into Centraal Station, in Amsterdam, and we felt almost chilled when taking the seven-minute ferry ride across to the north side of town, where a sort of bohemian arts scene has grown up.

A few hours later, we were having a very interesting dinner a few hundred yards from our hotel — a former warehouse, as are just about all the buildings in the immediate vicinity.

In France, it would not occur to anyone to take over an enormous warehouse and turn it into a bar/restaurant. But the Dutch tend to think outside the box, and someone has made the warehouse-to-resto leap, as represented by Pllek — which is meant to evoke the Dutch word for “place”.

The interior is sprawling, as you might expect. One end is mostly open, for those who want to eat al fresco — which is a great idea this time of year. The other end is one very long bar with four or five barkeeps behind the counter.

In one corner, inside, patrons are invited to sit or sprawl while they wait for a table or nurse a beer. Another corner features adjoining couches next to a small dance floor, and the bulk of the ground floor is covered by long tables that seat 10 people each.

And there is overflow room on balconies upstairs. Two walls have tables and chairs enough for an additional 30 patrons, and the wall above the bar has a half-dozen little two-person couches with stools to place your food and drink.

I am not remotely hip enough to be in there; most of the crowd appeared to be in the 20-to-35 demographic.

But we never felt uncomfortable, and enjoyed our food and drink. The service can be a bit pokey, but we were not in any hurry and hardly noticed.

Pllek skews toward meatless dishes, though it did offer steak and fish. I had the “summer couscous” — which was a variety of seasoned vegetables with a bit of harissa and faux yogurt-and-cucumber, for further flavor.

It all pointed up the significant differences in living in small-town France versus visiting Amsterdam, but modern aircraft can take you from one world to the other in a few hours.

In the U.S., a couple of hours in the air may not be enough to get from one time zone to another.