We were off to Amsterdam this morning and, for once, there was no flying involved, which made for a much less stressful and, not to say environmentally friendly, journey. That’s not to say that it was any shorter, as door-to-door, the journey took us seven hours.
When we arrived at St. Pancras station, we decided to head straight in, and while it wasn’t as stringent as the security at airports, we still had to have our bags and bodies scanned, but none of this 100ml liquids and removing electronic devices, though. By the time we were through security, we’d had our passport checked four times by man and machine in a job creation exercise that very much reminded me of my visits to India in the nineties. I guess that after we had been through passport control, we were effectively on French soil despite having not boarded the train and still being in London.
One of the advantages of having French passport control in London was that the train was able to go all the way to Amsterdam without us having to get off. Unfortunately, not something that we will be able to repeat on the journey home.
Eurostar is like a slightly upgraded intercity train that we get in England with seating that was like what you would find on a plane, and, just like a plane, it was beginning to get a bit uncomfortable after four hours seated. You could obviously walk up and down the train, but it does get a bit tedious after a while.
Do what the Tourists do
Walking out of Amsterdam Centraal into the glorious sunshine reminded us of just why we love the city so much. It is an attractive place right from the start and I maintain that I could happily live here – should I win the Euromillions giving me the wherewithal to buy a comfortable townhouse.
We had decided to book onto a canal tour at nine and spent a pleasant hour drifting around the canals, taking lots of pictures just like the tourists that we are.
