The London airport is quite a ways from downtown and the train station that we needed to get to in order to board our high speed train to Brussels. Before we searched for the right train to get us there, we were hoping to find a sim card for D's jailbroken iPhone. D did some research and knew they sold them at the airport. However, upon finding the vending machine to purchase one, the box lead him to believe it wouldn't work for his (super old 3GS) iPhone. We decided that rather than spend the 15Euros on something that wouldn't work, we would just skip it. Who really needs a phone when traveling around Europe, right? I foresee no issues with this... The other option we had was to go to the carriers store, but that would require a 30 minute cab ride. This girl was not interested. That left us with traveling across Europe with no actual phone, besides Google voice that works through WIFI. This could get interesting, but we decided to take our chances.
The next step lead us to take a train from the airport to the London St. Pancras station. One thing to know about London is that the Underground (metro) has lines shut down A LOT. Luckily we were in an English speaking country and figuring out which trains we needed to take to get there were pretty easy.
D had to make our first train experience interesting when he about got stuck in the doors - oops! Luckily, the door popped back open and he didn't get yelled at by the driver (we saw that happen later in the trip!). I was pretty excited to travel via train. The ease of travel and quickness, amazing. Plus, the first train ride was even better because there was the most adorable little kids riding beside us. I adore the English accent and having them say mum every other sentence warmed my heart.
We make it to our station, but still had some time to kill before our high speed train actually left. We walked out of the station, grabbed some coffee, and of course, I had to get a pastry to munch on. We had all our luggage on us, so we didn't want to venture out too far. I was already loving all the cars, the sun and not sitting for an hour or so. Sometimes it really is the little things. Before we know it we are boarding the train, finding our seats and off to Brussels. The first train was pretty quick.
We really wanted to spend some time in Brussels, and pulling into the city, it looked so cute. That didn't happen though. This was one thing we had to miss out on. The trip from Brussels to Amsterdam was the one leg of our trip that we didn't have a ticket purchased for already. The high speed train that normally runs to Amsterdam (and only takes an hour and a half) was completely closed due to a snow storm that messed up their trains earlier that week. This station had hardly any English displayed, and we could not for the life of us figure out what tickets to get with their electronic screens. We couldn't even see Amsterdam as an option to get to. We ended up walking around the rather large station to find a ticket attendant. After a little wait, we were able to get our tickets using intercity trains, which meant the trip would now take about three hours.
Once we got onto the train, we realized that we had two different tickets, and we were super confused that the second ticket didn't even say Amsterdam. Another key point to know about the trains is that they are always going to say the termination station, not your end destination. Yeah, sounds like that would have been super helpful to know.
We just trusted we were on the right train, since the ticket attendant specifically told us what gate we were to board on. We also didn't realize we had to change trains. One would have thought the attendant would have told us that too. We definitely had to talk through the tickets to realize that the only solution that made sense was that we had to exit at the station listed on the first ticket. At this point we are just hoping and praying that we are making the right choices. It's not like there are attendants on these trains to ask either.
Our second train was where the people started to get really interesting. This train was super full upon arriving, and we squished into the standing area with our luggage. A couple stops down, some really drunk guys got on, and of course, they had to stand by us. One kept leaning toward me and ended up pushing us to the wall. Drunken Dutch men falling all over us, best introduction to European trains! I would have yelled at him, but I highly doubted that he would have even understood it or cared. I'm pretty sure it would have made matters worse. Luckily, one of his friends wasn't as drunk and kept telling him to stop crowding me and falling into the bathroom. We also got to see our first view of 'ladies in windows shaking their stuff' (to put it nicely) as we were going through a small town on our journey. Our preview of the great things you'll see in the Red Light District. We were definitely amazed that we made it to the right place three hours later. There were many times we weren't sure we would.
When we arrived into the Amsterdam station, it was around 20:30 and rather than having to walk and search for our hotel, we grabbed a cab. At that point, just thinking of the headache of finding our place it the dark did not seem worth it. Check in was pretty easy. We of course had a room on the 4th floor with only stairs, welcome to Europe.
The room wasn't horrible. It's always hard to tell what rooms will look like online. We by no means were looking for super nice places to stay. Our mentilty was to keep them cheap, but not a hostel. This room had three single beds, two of which were pushed together.
We settled in, but didn't stick around long. We hadn't eaten yet, and of course we, had to go explore the city, even if it was late. We'd been sitting all day, so who needs to sleep. Plus, Amsterdam is the cutest city.
There wasn't a ton of people out on a Tuesday night, but we walked over the canal and into a street with more food options. Since we really didn't use much energy traveling all day, we weren't super hungry. We ended up at a bar. Really, we just wanted a beer.
After a few of those, we ordered some snacks off their bar menu. I wanted to keep to the local culture as much as possible and ordered the liver and sausage meat plate accompanied with bread, olive paste and hummus. It sounds like a good idea and most of it was good, but the sausage was not the best option. It didn't look like it was cooked, but it had to be okay right?
Well, we ate some of it, again, probably not the best option. The bar had the cutest cat that was super friendly. Apparently it belonged to someone down the street, but knew it would get fed there, so he made an appearance a lot. We eventually made our way back to our hotel out of the cold!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a comment! I would LOVE to hear from you.