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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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even better. Like a child sitting down with a box of 30 pencils and hqving 5 or 6 green ones - I could imagine God (excuse the spiritual analogy) sitting down with q palette of thousands of colours and using hundreds and hundreds of different greens to create the Belgian forests. They were definitely Hansel and Gretel type forests filled with fairies and sprites - not Lord of The Rings type forests filled with hobbits, dwarves and elves.

It was raining when we got to Antwerp and as the only wet weather gear Mel and I have are beanies, this posed a small problem. A little bit of rain never hurt anyone but it can wreak havoc with a girls hair. We got into a cab to our floatel (our hotel was on a boat)/ we were very excited about this but like the rest of the day things didn't turn out quite like we expected. The boat looked more like a cargo ship than accommodation and the looks weren't deceiving us. It was not very nice and had I been by mysemf I probably would have been distressed. One of the great things about traveling with your best friend is that when things like that happen you just laugh about it. To make mtters worse the restaurant and bar were closed so we had to go out in the rain to find somewhere for dinner.

Mel actually found us a bus to catch back closer to the centre of town and we found a nice restaurant for dinner. As the weather was so terrible we looked into seeing a movie and much to our delight Charlie and the Choc factory was playing nearby. We made our way there post haste and could not believe our luck to find an engligh version of Charlie. In line with the rest of our day we were bitterly disapppointed with the movie. Mel and I are both die hard fans of the original movie and whilst I will not criticise the movie here (that would be an entry in itself) we were less than impressed.

As we made our way back to the dismal floatel I was sorry that I was in such poor spirits in Antwerp. Had we not had such an unfortunate day on the trains, had our hotel been nicer and had the weather been pleasant I am sure I would think Antwerp a plesant little town. As it was though, we got up Friday morning and headed to Brussels without even worrying about bfast. Brussels was not disappointing in the least and as I sit here now writing we have already had the most wonderful morning. I wonder how much of that has to do with every second shop selling either chocolate or icecream...