On the way to Amsterdam…

Next morning I quickly checked for any answers from AirBnB hosts for a room in Amsterdam. Nothing but a couple more rejections. Damn. Well, I thought, when I get to Amsterdam I’ll impose on a taxi driver to find me a hotel room or something. Still wondered what the deal was…why everything was booked? I began to wonder, based on the kinds of rejection notes I was getting, that had I’d been a cute 20 something woman if the hosts might not have suddenly had an open bed for me.

Well, whatever, made my way to the train station and off we went.

Pretty nice train. Large comfortable seats with enough empties that I had a table all to myself. Have to say it was really fast and smooth ride too. Boarded around 9:30 AM. 

And here’s some fine German countryside. And some typical older German houses. Back at the train station, I’d bought myself a turkey sandwich on really dark bread for this 6 hour trip. Usually I don’t go for that dark bread because it smothers the flavors between the slices but it looked pretty good at the train station deli so I had to try it. Not bad. And here we are in Amsterdam. Cool. Always wanted to visit.  It’s around 4 PM when I get outside the train station and have a look around. By now, I’ve talked myself into just going fancy and finding a hotel room for 2-3 nights. There must be something in town that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Above is the main street and those buildings on the right are hundreds of years old. Nearly all of them had plaques about some historical happening. I found myself a bar with kitchen and had an early dinner of soup and sandwich. Checked with the bartender about finding a room for the night somewhere inexpensive and he proceeded to let me know that the whole town was booked solid. Clear out to the suburbs. Except for one or two hotels in downtown where a nights stay would be like $300 US. While we were talking, a hotel concierge walks in and the bartender asks him about his hotel. Booked up except for the most expensive rooms. Yikes! What’s going on? Turns out that it’s a national holiday and thousands upon thousands flock to Amsterdam for this special weekend that I happened to choose to visit. Shit.  After talking to several people at the bar, finding anywhere decent to stay this particular week in Amsterdam sounded hopeless. Here it was a Thursday and all but with everything booked up through the weekend.

Well, apparently I can’t visit Amsterdam this particular week, so I quickly got online and looked for a way out of town. OK, I’ll come back to Amsterdam later in the trip. While checking the transportation options out of the city, I happened on a bus ride to London that was almost impossible to pass up. Left later that evening and only 39€. Had on board WiFi it said. Can’t beat that. Both train and plane are 3-4 times that amount. So I booked a trip for later that day. Then I feverishly went to work trying to find a hostel in London to stay at. Oh, hey, St. Chris’ had a shared room available. In fact most of the hostels did…but I’d stayed at a St. Chris’ before on the mainland and it was really nice. OK, turned out to be easy, and I’m all booked. Checking the map for where the bus staged, I had just enough time for a couple beers, a stroll around the section of city I was in, take a bus ride to the station, and that was it.

While strolling up and down the street in the above photo, I wandered into a curio shop. It had been there as a souvenir and curio shop since the 1400’s! The place is spectacular. Wow. I looked at their ‘made in Germany’ cuckoo clocks and they started at $600 US and went up from there. Yikes. And me with nowhere to put one in my RV. But they also had fancy, lidded German beer steins. OK, I’ll get one of these for my brother since he is a collector and at one time had quite a few of them but most had been broken over the years. What with shipping and all, cost $200. Ouch. But I could claim for years from now that it cost in the thousands since I’d had to go to Europe to get it.

When the bus arrived, I’d been hanging around what was just a parking lot with a small building without a working toilet for an hour or so. Just a little way outside of downtown but in a kind of rural setting. When I’d gotten off the city bus it was difficult to spot the bus station. Anywho, the above shot shows that the bus wasn’t going to be all that pleasant. The driver was friendly and let me know that yes, they had a WiFi system but you couldn’t get online until London, if then. Damn. Fukin’ lying marketing people. I’d also screwed up when I’d ordered my ticket and so ended up paying for two tickets. Altogether it cost me 78€ instead of the 39€ I’d hoped for. Oh well. Still not that much.

When everyone arrives and start finding a place, we’re almost all aboard (I’m still standing outside the door) when this woman and family arrive and she’d lost her ticket but still wanted to get aboard. The bus company took either a printed receipt or an e-ticket but she had neither. Forgotten it back at her hotel. The driver sent her home and we took off into the gathering dusk.

Took these shots to show you that yes, most of the Netherlands are watery. But not all. Here we are heading to Rotterdam. Or for you innocents, Rotterdarn. So we stop for a few minutes at the Rotterdam station with it’s bended building. One of the workman must have been leaning on it when it was built. Shortly after leaving Rotterdam it got real dark. Since it was night time, that wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was that an hour later the driver got on the PA and asked anyone that had a camera to try to get a picture of the license plate of the car that seemed to be harassing us at freeway speeds. Coming to close to the side of the bus on the high speed lane side, or zooming in front and then standing on the brakes…that sort of thing. I was on the passengers side of the bus so I missed all that.

Later that night, when we stopped at another city to board and debark passengers, that woman who had forgotten her ticket and her friend follow us into the bus parking lot. It’s the car that had been harassing us. The woman runs up and tries to get aboard. Apparently she and her friend had found her ticket. The bus driver was not having any of that shit after what they’d done. The bitch and her friend had almost caused us to go off the road numerous times with their aggressive driving. We had been subjected to several emergency braking occurrences, AND, the dumb bitches never once tried to communicate that they wanted the bus to stop when they were driving right alongside. Just harassed us. He told them he was going to call the cops if they didn’t leave. They ended up delaying us 15 minutes while they argued with the driver, we could miss our ferry if they don’t back off. They finally did, the one woman basically kicking and screaming, with her friend dragging her away, and then screeching off in a cloud of burned tire rubber. Dumbasses.

After that little bit of unpleasantness, we continued on our way to a ferry port. I’d mistakenly thought that we’d be riding the bus through the Chunnel. But no. We’re to take a ferry. When the bus gets to the ferry dock, we all exit the bus and queue up inside British customs. Over here in the Netherlands. It’s around 1 AM, I’m tired, it’s hard to sleep in the bus as it is. When we finally filter through customs, it’s 2 AM or so. We board the bus again, then wait in the bus queue to board the boat. After we’re finally aboard, the bus driver lets us out of course so we get to tour the ferry. Pretty big. Sooo brightly lit. Not really anywhere to take a comfortable nap…though many tried. I ended up having several cat naps but mostly stayed up all night I’m afraid. Hours later, after crossing the channel it’s daylight, and we’ve arrived at Dover. Or somewhere like Dover. White cliffs and such. Here’s the dining room of the ferry. Big place. Lots of goodies to buy if you’ve a mind to.  And here comes the rain that England is famous for. Then just as quickly as the rain started, it stopped. Nice. Bunch of ferries waiting for passengers.

So we’re ushered back aboard the bus, eventually exit the ferry, then head for London. Seemed like a lot of travel for a mere 39€. Even with my screw up and double payment, 78€ didn’t feel that bad a price for that adventurous of a trip. And the drama with the damsel trying to force us off the road and subsequent refusal to let her board the bus made it worth it too. I can’t even remember if the ferry cost extra. Pretty sure it didn’t though because I bought my ticket to London online and the one price covered the entire trip.

Tune in next time when we wander around London trying to find flea markets or electronics stores.