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We got up early (which to me is anytime before 9am when I am on holidays) to get ready for our trip to Cologne. We made our way to the train station and found theinformation area. We were supposed to be on a 10am train to Cologne but we could not see it on the departing board. It turned out that on Wednesdays the train to Cologne leaves from Utrecht - 30mins away on the train. Where we were supposed to glean that information from I am not quite sure so we then made our way to Utrecht and found the right train to Cologne. Trains in Europe are so above and beyond trains in AUstralia and not evencomparable to trains in Egypt. It took us just over 2hrs to get from Utrecht to Cologne and the journey was very pleasant. You spend most of the time traveling through rolling hills and fields. I had Anna with me but the scenery outside the window is too beautiful to have your head in a book. Mel and I both had our IPOD's and with our music and the view to keep us occupied the time went quickly.

Amsterdam to Cologne to Antwerp

Natalie Moore
2006-03-03 19:30:58

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such huge dinners the two previous nights with Swee-Im in Amsterdam we both wanted something healthy so ordered salads from room service. One cannot eat the salads in Egypt so it had been some time since I had one. After dinner we went out exploring a little more but it ia much cooler here than Amsterdam and after not too long we decided to go back to the warmth of our hotel where we hired a silly girlie movie to watch.

I had a delicious bfast at the hotel on Thursday morning and we made our way to the station. We had found out the day before that we needed to get on a 10,16 train to Brussles and thenchange to get to Antwerp. We made our way toi the sation, the corect platform and onto the train with no difficulty. We both announced to each other how impressed we were with ourselves. I had worn boots that day so there were no more toe running over incidents. The train was especially nice and we both got ourselves rather comfortable. Ten minutes after we left Cologne the ticket inspector came by. All we need to do in these situations is to show our Eurail pass which we had already had marked off that day. The young gentlemen then asked us if we had a reservation... We did not and we had no idea that we were supposed to get one. He then told us that we had to pay 70euros each as this was a special train, or get off at the next stop. I proceeded to ask him if it was at all possible for him to pretend that he hadnt seen us and batted my eyelids until I felt faint - but we obviously had an inspector terribly fond of rules. We got off at the next station in Aachen and had to wait 1.5hrs for a train to Liege. Once in Liege we had to wait another 45 mins for a train to Brussles and from there another 15 mins to get to Antwerp. We ended up in Antwerp at 4pm, several hours later than expected.

The only highlight of the day was the scenery from Aachen into Brussles. Up until now the most amazing countryside I have seen was in Switzerland - but this was even ...