Amsterdam Centraal Station

I'm sitting at the top of the stairs, in our little home, waiting for Little Man to settle into his own bed again. Its been a long day but that feeling of being home is incredibly rewarding.

We left for Horsham Station at 6:30 (British Summer Time BST¹) this morning, to catch the 6:54 train to London St Pancras. We could have caught an later train but if there had been delays, we'd have been cutting it a bit too fine. We made it to London with an hour to spare. Check-in, security and passport control were easy. It was just a case of organising everything once it had come out the x-ray machine. There was an x-ray machine that had stopped working half way through, so a couple of passengers couldn't find where their luggage had gone. One lady ended up going through customs without her luggage, then tried to go back for it (only to get yelled out by the border force officer). I think she got it in the end.

The problem with the international lounge at St. Pancras is that it's small! Each Eurostar train has the capacity for about 890 passengers. When if there's any more than 1,800 people waiting for their trains, then there's very little room to breath, let alone move about with a pushchair and suitcase.

Our train was initially delayed by 6 minutes, which turned into 20, by the time we boarded. Little Man watched some Paw Patrol on his tablet, ate something and chilled for the first few hours before spending the last hour and half running up and down the carriage. The train stopped in Lille, France, Brussels Midi, Belgium and Rotterdam Centraal, the Netherlands before terminating in Amsterdam. So people disembarked the train along the way, with very few passengers joining us. So by the time Little Man decided to go running about, the train was almost empty.

By the time we got to Amsterdam Centraal, we were about 35-40 minutes late. It did give me the chance to grab some milk at the station and fill up our water bottles, then ensure we were standing at the right end of the platform for the train to Woerden. There were signalling problems further down the line, which meant the train terminated at Woerden. We got there to a platform change, and with the lifts being currently out of service on the platform we arrived at, I had to get help getting Little Man and our stuff up to the walkway above the platforms.

Our friends, Floris and Christine, were waiting outside the station for us and dropped us home. Little Man had a blast reaquanting himself with his toys. He's just gone to bed after a quick bite to eat.

Our travels have been updated and are viewable on PolarSteps, if you’d like to look through.

¹Greenwich Mean Time GMT+1