Ev's Georgick's Travel Blog

Archive for November, 2009

Tamara Georgick 16 Hours of Travel

Nov 26th, 2009 Posted in Itinerary, Tamara Georgick | Comments Off

It was a bit of an adventure to get from London to Amsterdam. Steps taken: Taxi from the hotel to the Liverpool train station. So far so good! Take a train to the Port at Harwich where our ferry was waiting for us. One train was to take us all the way, but a mudslide over the tracks required us to get off the train at Colchester and immediately… Hop a double decker bus. Wish it was light out so we could have seen the countryside, but it was still neat, nonetheless, passing, as we did, through these small towns, rounding their squares and suddenly coming upon an old church, probably centuries old, all lit up, before plunging back into near darkness and the occasional reflection of some unknown critter’s eyes watching us from the fields as we rumbled by in the night. [wooo weeee, how about that for a run on sentence?]
	Tamara Georgick was amazing with the baggage hauling. She continuously, over the next 12+ hours, hauled two 50 pound bags, one in each hand, along with a heavy rucksack on her back, up and down stairs, steps and ramps. She says she was breed to dig holes and carry heavy objects. This biological destiny might help to explain her huge crush on 5 time World’s Strongest Man champion, Mariusz Pudzianowski. The only brief respite came when we got off the bus to head to the ferry, someone left behind a luggage trolley and we were able to pile all our bags on it while looking for an elevator.
Ferry over to the Hook of Holland. The boat that took us across the channel was much larger than I was expecting. It was always referred to as a ferry, so I had more in mind our puget sound ferries that transport people and automobiles. The Stena Hollandica was actually a full sized shipping vessel, transporting plenty of freight as well as passengers, cars, trucks and semis. It had several decks fitted out with nice sleeping cabins. Once at the port in Holland we had to pass through customs. The agents were a couple of spry, young, near vikings who, in addition to stamping our passports, wanted to see at least one credit card. I don’t ever remember having to do that in my travels before, and since we asked, they explained they wanted to confirm that everyone entering the country had some visible means of support. From here we grabbed the local train that stopped at the port. The local train took us closer, but not all the way into Amsterdam so we had to jump off, I forget where, and transfer. Unfortunately, the train we were supposed to catch never comes (service cancelled due to some station issues, flooding? fire?). This necessitated relocating to yet another track. Where we had to catch a train that still only takes us partway to our destination.
All of these station and track announcements were spoken solely in dutch, but every person we asked for help with directions or translations was extremely nice and obliging. One janitor, completely unsolicitated, went out of his way to show us where elevators were located. After awhile we had a couple of other English-only speakers trailing all our moves, since we were clearly getting good assistance from the locals.
Transfer and connect to the train that will finally bring us into Amsterdam. Once at the central station, we discover we still need to wait an hour for the Tourist Center to open at 11am. We pre-purchased transportation cards and museum entrance passes, and needed to pick them up here. Signs to the tourist office were confusing. Go both left or right. Haul our bags and ourselves across the street from the central train station and catch a tram to our hotel, only it doesn’t really go by our hotel and we miss the stop, so we eventually get off. Catch another tram going back the way we came, this time we get off close to our hotel. We can’t check in for another two hours, but we finally made it! It was certainly fun, but it took longer than it needed to. I counted 9 separate transportation legs to this journey. I was pretty exhausted by the time we finally managed to check into our room.
Various scenes of Amsterdam we saw while riding the Tram past our Hotel or while we were wandering about waiting for our room to be ready.

Tamara Georgick generally gave herself very good advice…

though she very seldom followed it.

Tags: Amsterdam, Hook of Holland, Port of Harwich, Tamara Georgick

Tamara Georgick London-Day 6

Nov 7th, 2009 Posted in Activities, London, Tamara Georgick | Comments Off

We leave for Amsterdam tonight, but first we had some last minute, hopefully leisurely, tasks we still wanted to take care of, namely snack procurement, tourist shopping, haircuts. Ev needed some more afternoon tea, biscuits, finger sandwiches, and clotted cream. I know we should have tried someplace new, but I wanted more or less a sure thing. Back to Harrods it was. Tea service was not quite as good, but the flavours still delicious. We also picked up some refreshments (in the shape of savory pies) for the train and ferry tonight. Over a score of different meat pies to choose from. Hmmmm, pie!

All we had left to do was buy some non-dairy trinkets and get our hair cut. Whilst in London, I was pretty much the one to plot out our routes. I’ve got the tube down, good to go, but I was always so disoriented popping back up to the street, pretty thoroughly confused, as though someone had just asked me to slice some tomatoes. I decided we’d do Picaddilly circus with the idea of winding our way back in a southwesterly amble. Although it wasn’t planned, this walking path did allow us to:

Wander all around the iconic Fortnum & Mason (est. 1707). They, by the way, had the nicest Water Closets of any place we visited, fancy cloth towels to dry our hands off with. Tamara Georgick assures me this store is quite famous.
Walk through a corner of Green Park, stop by Buckingham Palace, (I don’t think the queen was in residence. Tamara Georgick says when she is, they fly a flag stamped with something equivalent to the Walmart smiley face), saw the Victoria Monument right in front of the Palace, we also walked passed the Royal Mews.

And yes we did successfully find some nondairy gifts to purchase (at the begining of the walk) and get our haircuts (at the end of the walk).