Our travel days are dwindling and based on today’s experience we’re ok with that. We ended up booking a flight to get from Amsterdam to London rather than continuing our Eurrail Adventures. We missed out on going through the Chunnel which would have been novel but at the time, booking a quick flight seemed the easiest.
We had to check out of our hotel about 3 hours before our flight so a good time to head to the airport. We were expecting a quick trip to the gate so figured we’d have extra time on our hands.
Once there, we checked in our bags and then headed for security and a long long line. We eventually headed up to the next level and continued to wait in a long long line. It’s definitely our longest airport wait of the trip – longer than any inbound immigration line and twice as long as our flight turned out to be.
We got our passports stamped, exiting the EU after 85 days. We had a lot of Adventures but are struck by how many places we didn’t get to go. All the more reasons to come back!
We were a little worried about getting from the airport to the City. There are three days of train strikes scheduled the 21st, 23rd and tomorrow. So while the trains would be running today, we were told to expect some disruption so we weren’t sure what would happen.
Turns out the train portion was the easiest part of the trip: e tickets worked great, we boarded the train with plenty of seats, it left 5 minutes later and delivered us straight to Victoria Station which was a non-hilly 10 minute walk from our apartment. Really glad that was easy.
Also really glad we didn’t have any trouble checking into our Apartment – or our ‘flat’ as it’s called here in London. We’re staying in the Pimlico neighborhood which is not as famous as Kensington or Chelsea or Notting Hill, but it’s close to those and much more affordable. It also feels very local and non-touristy which we like.
We have the top two floors so after climbing two flights of stairs we dropped our stuff, fresher up and did a little exploring. We ended up for dinner at a Chinese restaurant which had good food and great decor
Not surprisingly the kids spotted a playground in the one block between the restaurant and our place so they spent time there while Tiffany did a grocery run. The store was very disorienting because all the labels were in English! That’s the first time we haven’t used Google Translate in a grocery store for over 6 months.
We still had a little time after we got back to the flat so we played our own version of Heads Up with post it notes. We did a few different categories and all got a turn. It was a lot of fun and the kids were great at it.
We’re not sure how the weather will be this week but we’re looking forward to exploring. London is our last stop before we head back to the US so we’re hoping to make the most of it.
5 Adventures Together 