Friday 1/8 To Amsterdam, a crappy day

We packed and headed over to the Gare du Nord station. This time though, we took the metro. We had wanted to get some sort of breakfast with coffee and croissants before we parted ways. We thought the metro would give us more time before Dani had to check in.

Em and I left our bags at a wall with Dani, and went to get ourselves booked over to Amsterdam. The lining took freaking ages, and made took up too much time to get the breakfast we had wanted. Ah well. Also, the direct to Amsterdam was full, so we had to go there via Brussels.

We waited with Dani in line for her to check in for her Eurostar train. We said our farewells and then Em and I went to wait around for our train. We got some breakfast pastries. We caught the train over to Brussels, a very cool place, it seems by the station alone.

There was a nice food court there and we got ourselves some lunch, in the form of Asian food in boxes. Yum, and very filling for a decent price. We got to our platform and the train didn´t come. Everybody soon discovered that we had to get a different one and then change a few stops down to a train going to Amsterdam. Well, it wasn´t too dificult since everybody was pretty much doing the same thing. But, it was a tad annoying.

When we got into Amsterdam we went over to the Flying Pig Downtown to see if they had any beds. I was a bit iffy on the apparently far location of our other place (in caravans) and I wanted to check to see if we could get somewhere closer. Unfortunately, they had nothing. Not surprising since it was about 5 in the arvo. The morning would have probably been a better shot at it.

We also realised that we didn't know how to get to our other place, so we found an internet café around the corner and we looked it up. The instructions that the place gave were disheartening. They were complicated, involving catching multiple and various forms of public transport and walking too. The option for the taxi involved getting on a freeway.

Well, we decided to just get a taxi. It was already late, and I at least didn't have the energy to try figure out 4 changes in public transport on the way to this place. So, we got ourselves a taxi. The driver was scary, in driving and attitude. He looked like someone who had only immigrated there a few years ago, and he was very bigoted. We mostly just sat quietly.

The drive to the place took ages. I watched as the meter ticked and ticked over; 20 euros, 30 euros, 40 euros...45 euros. We were out in the middle of nowhere. I´m not even sure that the area still classified as Amsterdam. Sigh. I was a tad upset about it all. We checked in and got our caravan, and spent part of the night drafting blogs. We had an early night, hoping to head into town early in the morning to find somewhere else to stay.