What a weekend! I am MADLY IN LOVE with Amsterdam! before I go into all that - there is a journey to tell you!
Itinerary for Friday:
6:15am: Meet Coach at Baker Street Station
9:30am: Arrive at Ferry Crossing of Dover, England (get there late so miss planned Ferry, wait to catch next one)
11:00am: Drive coach onto Ferry, sail across Straight of Dover (English Channel) to Calais, France.
1:00pm: (France time- one hour boat cruise) Arrive in Calais, stop off at a booze wherehouse 15 minutes from ferry landing, where I stock up on inexpensive French, Italian and Spanish wine. Made another stop for bathroom relief and snacks. Drove through Belgium, on to the Netherlands.
6:30pm: Arrival in Amsterdam, check into the hotel, drop off bags, freshen up.
7:30pm: back on Coach into town, where Glen, our adorable bald Tour Guide (I have this weird thing for bald men) walked us into the red light district, ending at Amsterdam's most famous Sex Show at the Theater Casa Rosso. (YES - really!)
So the group of us were on a large Coach, with fairly uncomfortable seats...It was quite fun driving onto the ferry - that was a big adventure for me - and those of you who know me well, know that I get very excited over very small things. It's super easy to amuse me - and I was fully amused. :) The ferry's are quite large, carrying many buses and big-rig freight trucks plus personal cars and pedestrian passengers. There is a pub, a cafeteria, a French restuarant and a duty-free shop on board. We ate at the cafeteria, and sat around exhausted already from the early departure and all of the coach travel.
www.calais-port.com
Once the Coach deboarded the ferry boat, we left right away to the Booze wherehouse. I had so much fun going through the wines! Bottles of French and Italian wines were only 1 to 5 Euros! Glen told us to buy what we needed for Amsterdam, and we would stop again to pick up stuff to bring home to London.
The countryside from Calais, through Belgium and across Nederland to Amsterdam was very similar...of course, it was only a 4 hour drive :)
It also reminded me of the countryside in Colorado, specifically, Northern Colorado. The area is fairly flat, it is very green (CO is only very green in spring), and there are fields of cows and sheep everywhere. The trees were tall and deciduous...leaves were falling. The properties were different - there was certainly an air of "European countryside" to them...quite quaint and beautiful. Although Coach travel is not the most comfortable, it is nice to be able to see the roads and more of the landscape of the areas. Many times, trains go through empty areas, but we drove right through Antwerp and saw many examples of architecture, billboards in French, Dutch, and Flemish....
Arriving in Amsterdam the way we did, we did not see the center of the city yet...we arrived at our Hotel Slotania...and dropped off our bags. I yelled to my cohorts, "WE'RE IN AMSTERDAM!!!!!" Yeeee Haw! Let's GO!
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