Our journey through Holland

I really want to tell you about one of my last trips and this time, I wasn't on my own, I was in really good company. I want to tell you about my trip to Holland with my friends, Alejandro and Alberto at the end of March of this year. And if only my trips to Paris and Cologne weren't so expensive, then this trip wouldn't have been so short...

Valladolid- Madrid

At first, there was supposed to be 4 of us going on the trip, but at the start of March, after we had already arranged everything, something came up and our friend couldn't come, leaving just the 3 of us. The day before we started our trip, we slept in my flat in Valladolid and at 4am on Saturday 28th March, we set off and headed to the bus station to start the first leg of our journey. We went directly to the Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport for 15 euros. Once we got dropped off at terminal 4, we changed bus so we could get to terminal 1 which was where we were flying from, with the company RyanAir. The return flight only cost us 60 euros, from Madrid to Eindhoven. The route is very regular so this is why the price was so low.

Madrid - Eindhoven

We arrived at terminal 1 with plenty of time to spare before our 9am flight to Holland. We got to the terminal, we had breakfast, we messed around, we looked around the shops and after changing gates twice, we got on the plane at around 8. 30am. It was a small plane, typical of RyanAir, with tight and uncomfortable seats and an aisle that could only fit one person at a time. It was full of young people and it happened to be the weekend before Easter, so lots of students were off university. Not to be superficial or judge people based on first impressions but when I looked around I could tell that these people going to Holland were probably not going there for the Van Gogh museum.

The flight was fine, there was just the usual turbulence during take off and landing. During the journey, we tried to avoid buying any food or drink because this was a 'cheap' trip, and despite almost being tempted by the smells of the people eating in front of us, we resisted until we got to Eindhoven. When we arrived at the terminal and got our bags, we realised that we were in Holland which was a completely different world!

We headed out, the three of us talking in our normal voices and laughing a little bit, and we saw the usual group of people who were waiting for their relatives... but we were pretty surprised we could only hear ourselves, no one else was talking! All the Dutch looked on disapprovingly just because we were a little loud although we had barely been in the country but this must have been the reason that they were giving us such cold looks.

Eindhoven - Hertogenbosch

As soon as we stepped outside, the sky was black, and the rain got heavier whilst we were looking for the bus stop that would take us to Eindhoven train station. Our plan was to get a direct train to Amsterdam, but in the end it was confusing and the train that was supposed to be direct was in fact not direct. We took a local bus to get to the bus and train station where we got some food from the first place we could find which was a supermarket. Everything in Holland is more expensive than in Spain, from a baguette to a salad, so for this reason we didn't think about the costs we just wanted to buy something that would fill us up.

After eating and just about managing to buy the tickets (our English isn't great), we sat down and waited at the platform and tried to figure out which train it was we needed to catch. It was quite funny although frustrating because all the signs in the station were in Dutch and none of the place names looked anything like 'Amsterdam'. It took us more than half an hour to realise that no trains went straight to Amsterdam. All of them had Amsterdam as one of their destinations but not their only destination. A very kind train driver explained this to us who had a similar level of English, but we still didn't know which train to get. We looked at the map of Holland for the cities that were located between Eindhoven and Amsterdam and we realised that one of the cities was called Hertogenbosch. There was a train there every 20 minutes and it was on the same line as Amsterdam (Eindhoven is in the south of Holland and Amsterdam is in the North).

Without really knowing where we would end up and whether we were going to arrive safely in Amsterdam, we got on the train to Hertogenbosch. The ticket cost us 20 euros, and what we understood was that it was only a single but it could be used more than once throughout the day. We looked out on the landscape and made the most of passing through some different cities by getting off at some of the stops and having a quick look around them. We then got on a later train in the same direction until we arrived in Amsterdam.

The first stop was Hertogenbosch. We had never heard of this city in our lives but we got off anyway to see what it had to offer. When we got there, it wasn't raining so we could happily walk through the streets, it wasn't too cold either. We took some photos, looked for something to do but since there didn't seem to be much there, we quickly headed back to the station and left the city with the weirdest name I had ever heard.

Now was the fun part, finding a train to the next city (we didn't know where) in the direction of Amsterdam.

Hertogenbosch - Utrecht

I don't know how, but I think it was because of the crowd we saw, we got on a bus that headed to Utrecht which was still in the same direction as Amsterdam. We got on the bus (typical local bus the same as in Valladolid) not really knowing if our tickets were valid but we arrived in Utrecht all the same.

This was a city that we had already heard of and this was the second stop we made on our way to Amsterdam. We did the same thing as in Hertogenbosch, but walked around less here. We got off the bus with our luggage and headed down a street that seemed to lead to the city centre. But we found ourselves in a Turkish neighbourhood, and apart from the numerous bikes, it felt as if we were in Istanbul. There was a huge mosque at the end of the street and there were Turkish shops everywhere. We found a supermarket and got some food for the next day which was a Sunday and we were not sure if there would be any food shops open. We passed some of the canals in the city and after seeing the time and since it was getting dark, we decided it was best to go to the hotel in Amsterdam.

Utrecht - Ámsterdam

This time, we got on a train with its final destination being the Dutch capital. We got on without anyone asking us for our ticket which had been the case the whole day. When we were on the train, I checked my phone and I noticed that I had a few missed calls from an unknown number, but I just ignored it (when we arrived at the hotel we realised it was important). We finally got to Amsterdam after visiting Hertogenbosch and Utrecht which we definitely wouldn't have had the chance to visit if we flew directly from Madrid to Amsterdam, or if we had got a train straight there.

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