On the 1st of July my friends and I started our adventure across Europe, our first destination - Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Jenni, Milly, Laura and I decided we would travel to Amsterdam on the Eurostar because trains are the best, whilst the other eight in our group travelled by plane. The train left from St.Pancras at 8:00 in the morning on the 1st so Jenni and I stayed the night before at my Auntie Esther and Uncle Ben's flat which is about a 5 minute walk from the station. When we woke in the morning and began our walk to the station we were filled with excitement and nerves at the idea of what we were about to do, this meant we walked really quite fast with a spring in our steps.
At the station there was a little worry that we wouldn't find the other two but this was soon forgotten when we saw Laura with her dad near the security area and Milly in the crowd dressed in her usual hippy gear. It took us a little while to work out which queue to join but we did it and so waited for a short while to go through the security checks.
Once on the train we found our seats; Jenni and I sat behind Milly and Laura. We talked very loudly so the whole of the carriage had to listen even if they didn't want to. I'm pretty sure they wanted to because they all sat in silence for the majority of the journey. Later on we went to buy food, I bought a chocolate muffin and made the most chocolaty mess because I am probably one of the messiest people on Earth. I say it's because I'm artistic, my mum disagrees. Opposite us on the other side of the aisle were an American couple who we got chatting to. They said they would be our surrogate parents because they have four daughters of their own, they were such lovely people. Ironically they warned us about talking to strangers so Milly said "It's okay we don't like strangers" later worrying that, because they were American they didn't understand it was a joke. I think they did understand.
We changed trains at Brussels so took a few photos outside to prove we'd been there and then got on our next train to Amsterdam. We found our seats (which were not together) and I fell asleep for a while, only awaking when Jenni ran over to tell me that the girl she was next to (who was from Paris) was planning on moving soon so I could take her seat which I did. Once I had moved seats the train began to fill up extremely fast. It turned out they had overbooked the train so people were having to stand in the aisle and being told off for doing so, we were lucky to have seats. The lack of space on the train meant a couple of American guys had their bags in Jenni's face accidentally, she didn't mind because it meant we ended up making conversation with them easily, they were really nice. One of the best things about inter railing was definitely the number of interesting, genuinely lovely people you get to meet on the way, it is so easy to spark up a conversation with a stranger when you're carrying a 65 litre back pack around because you instantly stick out (especially when you're only 5' 2" like me). With all the extra people on the train there were also too many bags, they were originally piled up neatly on one side of the carriage in the bag area but at some point the side of the train the platform was on changed so, in order for people to get on and off, the staff on the train chucked all of the bags away from the door on to the floor. At this point one lady got off the train with 4 bags, we're talking 4 massive 70 litre kind of bags, the staff had to help her get them off but made sure to tell her that she was actually only allowed one bag, she waved them off and continued to get off the train. I wish I knew how she managed to walk along the platform with so many bags.
So we arrived in Amsterdam at around 1:30 full of energy, excited to properly begin our adventures across Europe, and proceeded to walk to our hostel (a journey that should take one and a half hours)…
I will continue my inter railing story soon.
Looking forward to the next installment!
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