There’s not really much to report, if I’m honest.
I got up in time to be able to get a 24 tram from Silsburg to the central station after a lovely breakfast with host, then had sufficient time to find a post office to send a card, despite the slow-moving, more-banking-less-actual-samp-buying nature of the people there. In any case, my 10.30am Thalys to Amsterdam was delayed about fifteen minutes due to “an unexpected abundance of travellers on the SNCB rail network” so I needn’t have fretted.
I got a message and an email informing of this delay forty-five minutes after the original departure time.
The Thalys wasn’t my intended train, but when I looked at SNCB Intercity services I intended to buy it’d gone up airline-stylee, so there wasn’t that much in it. I booked it on the SNCF site and got an upgrade for 4€, so that was nice. However, Anterwerpen Centraal has no indication of where your carriage will be (French stations have little displays showing you where to stand), and the Thalys came in in reverse order. Cue grumpy people running.
An hour and a few minutes later — mostly flat, lots of greenhouses — we pulled into in Amsterdam Centraal and I took advantage of my international first ticket to sit in the lounge and drink coffee and sparkly water, because I didn’t get any on the train.
I bought a 96-hour travel pass for 25€ then caught the tram two from the front of the station to the Vondelpaark just in time for it to start raining. I had a catch-up natter with Host, and then settled down to some work in the afternoon.
The last time I was here, apart from when the home leg of the first Extravaganza was first under way, was for the coronation of King Willem-Alexander in 2013, so there will be plenty to catch up on.
