We’re in Rotterdam!
We made it to Rotterdam. As I mentioned in the last entry, we were able to get a train to Brussels as planned. fortunately, we already had our tickets–they told a few people ahead of us who didn’t have tickets that they weren’t selling them anymore, so they were pretty much out of luck for the day.
The ride through the English and French countryside was fun. The Chunnel itself was pretty uneventful–there’s not much to see in a tunnel. 🙂 Customs on the London side were easy–the French border patrol pretty much stamped our passports and sent us on our way. Here in Europe, we didn’t have to pass through any other customs agents, so I suppose we’re all finished until we leave. Our train left at 13:25 from the beautiful London St. Pancras International terminal, and we arrived at somewhere near 16:30 in Brussels. We ended up getting through to an information desk to check on the next train to Rotterdam in time to find out that one was leaving at 17:15, which was about ten minutes away from the current time. We ran up to the platform and jumped on the train about two minutes before the doors closed. That ride lasted a while, too. It stopped in a few major places along the way from Brussels to Rotterdam, on its way for a final destination of Amsterdam. After getting lost trying to leave Rotterdam Central Station (the area outside is under major construction right now), a friendly person on the street helped us to get moving in the right direction, and we got to our hotel at around 20:00. I think our train deposited us in Rotterdam at around 19:00 or thereabouts.
We got checked-in and up to the room to collect ourselves a bit before heading out to dinner. We found a good Thai place which, unfortunately, had everything in the ultra-spicy variety. I like that, but it made it tough for Jenny to eat her shrimpy goodness. The dinner was good, though. We then explored Rotterdam some more looking for a “night market” (that’s what they call convenience stores open at night here–I seem to remember that from the last trip, too). Rotterdam seems to have most places close-up pretty early, so we had to search for a while to find this night market. We eventually did, got some good stuff (including “Cool American” flavor Doritos–I’ll let you guess what we might call them), and got back to the hotel at around 23:15.
There are more stories there, but I’m tired, so I’m headed to bed. I need to try to get Thunderbird working on my machine here so that I can read my work email, and then I’m going to call it a night. I have to be at the conference center tomorrow at around 8AM to register and get my sessions picked. It’s 02:00 here now, so I need to clean-up and sleep!
jonathan
