Fri, 11 Apr 2003

author Tim	location Nieuwe Brugsteeg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
posted 16:30 CEST 12/04/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/London/Working in London 1 ( all photos )

Departing England ( 3 photos )
A busy last few days have seen us work work work until Thursday, by which time we were both very keen to get on the road.
No problems at all on the flight over here, starting on Friday with a Thameslink train up to London Luton airport (London has four or five airports all around it), which was a pleasant way to spend the morning. It's always strange to go the other way on the train line you use every day.
After a few phone calls from my work asking questions I didn't really want to answer (I'm trying to be on holidays here guys!!), we arrived at Luton Airport Parkway station. From there, we got on to a shuttle bus to the airport itself.
By this stage, we realised just how useful the backpack/rucksack we bought the other week is. We fitted everything into it (it has a main pack and a zip-on "daypack" which is a smaller pack which can be separated), and strapped me into it, and that's all we have! A great change from the lugging-around of suitcases we started out with. The only thing we have forgotten to bring was a comb/brush, but that has now been replaced.
So, this big pack of ours is much easier to take on and off trains, buses, etc. At the airport we purchased a Europe road atlas so that we could find our way back to Calais with the van (more later!), and Liz found a replacement for her broken hand-bag she liked, but decided against it.
We had to pay attention to the screens in the terminals as there was no obvious way of knowing where to go, but we managed it the end.
The flight on EasyJet airlines was just fine, with very tight security. As evident by the police with assault rifles wandering around the airport which Liz found in her face as she turned around! OK, not quite in her face but scary enough. We half-expected to find TV cameras there, since that is one of the airports where they film that TV documentary/soap/reality show Airline, but no such luck.
Eventaully we were off to The Netherlands!

author Tim	location Nieuwe Brugsteeg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
posted 16:30 CEST 12/04/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Netherlands/Netherlands 1 ( all photos )

A Flight into Amsterdam ( 15 photos )
(Continued from Working in London 1)
It was strange flying out over the UK, as we were up quite high and hence couldn't see the ground for the cloud-cover. We joked that the end of the clouds we could see up ahead was where the UK's own ever-present personal layer of cloud probably ended. But it was true! We looked back under the clouds to see that indeed, we had now left the UK for what I termed "proper joined-on Europe". Depending on who you ask, UK people don't think they are in Europe at all anyway.
Mark from work was joking the other day that the flight to Amsterdam was very quick, since you climb, the flight-attendants rush around with sandwiches and the like, then you buckle-up for landing. Very true.
Flying in over "the continent", we saw just how amazing a place The Netherlands is in terms of water. They have Europe's busiest port in Amsterdam, as the huge queues out to sea of ships showed. The harbour areas go on and on. We were of course very excited to see our first cars driving on the "wrong" side of the road from the air!
The humorous American pilot talked us through our taxi into Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, as we did a few U-turns while he tried to find the correct bay to "dock" in. Good-natured airline, EasyJet.
Our first Dutch language signs served to confuse us greatly, but luckily almost all have English equivalents, and most people speak English at least a little.
No hassles getting bags or through customs, although since Liz was showing her UK passport, she just went through the "fast" lane, and didn't get a stamp. Most annoying, since that's part of the fun of travelling.
So we wandered through the airport, following the little picture of a train as we needed to get from there (a little way out of the city) to Amsterdam Centraal station. This proved quite simple to locate, and the ticket-machines easy to use once we worked out where the English button was, and that it didn't take cash.
The trains run quite frequently, so no major problem waiting for one, after we had worked out that platform 7a and platform 7b are different ends of the same platform. We fumbled our way onto the train, noting immediately that people were smoking on it. Everywhere. It seems that there are little signs on the outside of the carriages telling you whether they are smoking or non-smoking. Although, it's a pretty nominal suggestion - there's just less smoking in the non-smoking carriages.
The train only stopped at Amsterdam Centraal, although we weren't really sure since there were no signs on the platform. We just wandered around a bit until we realised that our location fitted in quite well with the map we had.

(More from 21:30 CEST 12/04/2003)
We wandered around for a while, attempting to work out which direction to look before crossing the roads, and eventually found a tourist information place. We had a coffee at the attached cafe, Liz bravely being the one to go and order, while I talked to the info people about how to get to a bank to get money out. Also, we grabbed a map from the map machine, despite being a little sceptical since the machine back in Chester ate our money and gave nothing in exchange. But everything in Europe works better!
We located our hotel, which turned out to be very handy to the Centraal station - wonderful since we used it quite a bit on the subsequent days. The land-lady seemed to have been indulging in some of the local past-times a little too much, and her cat wasn't much better.
After dumping our bags in the great modern room, we wandered in search of money exchange, which we found in Amsterdam Square (Liz in a clog!). We had our first of what turned out to be many relaxing sits in the sun, soaking up the atmosphere and generally not doing much at all, before wandering back in search of our friends.
Arriving on the stroke of 7pm, we stood outside Centraal station, looking for anyone who looked vaguely like they might be the person I had last seen in Year 11 at Sydney Tech and his girlfriend Jessi who we had never seen. Luckily, they had been looking at this website and seen recent photos of us, so they walked straight up and said hello!
That night, Sebastian showed us his local knowledge by directing us fairly well through to some of the interesting little areas further out from the city centre. We had Italian for dinner, and continued exploring the Dutch culture.

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