30 June 2010
The next day we traveled to the Netherlands. We had hotel reservations in Amsterdam for that night that we had already paid for and were non-refundable. After checking out of the hotel in London we took the C2 bus which goes all the way to Victoria Station. Bought three one way tickets for the C2 double decker.
Next we went to the coach station to take a coach bus from London to Dover. We had walked past the coach station the day before after the play so we would know where to go. Got the coach to the Dover Ferries line which allowed P&O passengers traveling on foot.
The ferry went to Calais France.
We activated our Eurail pass in Calais. From there we caught trains. First from Calais to Lille Fr. In Lille we had to catch the train to Brussels which we nearly missed. For one thing there was a time change (1 hour) between England and the continent. It also turned out that a reservation and additional money was required to ride the train, even though we had activated our Eurail pass in Calais. We caught the train to Brussels just as it was leaving. We then began to be worried that extra charges or reservations might apply. There was a train from Brussels to Amsterdam but it turned out to take more money and need a reservation and I think we missed it, but our original plan was to take the train from Brussels to Antwerp. I asked where we could find the train to Amsterdam which would be leaving soon and the conductor told us the wrong platform. Luckily Laurie noticed the sign on our platform said Amsterdam so we went back up and got on the train just in time. If we had missed that one we would have been stuck in Antwerp until 7 AM.
We got into Amsterdam at Midnight. I met an American on the train who had been to the World Cup in S. Africa and was from Seattle. We took a taxi to the hotel for ~10 Euro which would have been better than the bus tickets for 3 people. We stayed at the Eden Leidse Square Hotel:
http://www.edentheatredistricthotel.com/nl/overview.aspx
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