Interrail Europe 2002

Day Thirteen (Sat 26th) - Uprising

We got up, showered, packed and checked-out by 10am then went to Centraal Station to dump our bags in the lockers – our flight wasn’t until late so we didn’t really want to be carrying them round for the whole day. The walk through Centraal station to the locker area was not a pleasant one, the place is full of beggars, crack-heads and junkies. Some of the beggars hassle you whilst you’re trying to use the lockers, a little worrying as we were trying to secure our valuables – we were concerned that they may know a way to break the locks or something. One guy who was a little less pushy than the rest showed us how to use the lockers, he didn’t seem so threatening and didn’t ask for money so I gave him a couple of Euros for helping us. Once we were fairly sure our bags were safe and secure we headed back to town.

We grabbed an early lunch at a pizza place on the Damrak and then wandered aimlessly for a while, I always find the last day of the holiday to be so full of tedium, all you’re really doing is waiting for hours and hours just to go home. We eventually found some excitement when we came across a great big police-van crawling slowly up a back-street. Using somewhat questionable logic we decided that if there were a need for a large police presence that something interesting must be happening somewhere. We followed the van for a while and when it stopped we went to the end of the street into Dam Square where there were about a thousand people taking part in an anti-war demonstration – finally something interesting. We stood on the sidelines and watched the speeches (in Dutch), took some photos and had a wander around the crowd, picked up leaflets and bought a copy of The Socialist in English and in Dutch.

After a little while we’d seen enough and decided to move on, it was raining and neither of us could really think of anything to do that didn’t involve spending more money so we decided to go to the airport. Even though we would be about six hours early at least we’d be dry and one step closer to home. The train journey to Schiphol is short and painless, we finally managed to get on the top-deck of a double-decker train – we had seen many during the trip but hadn’t yet been on one. At the airport we wandered round and round, drank plenty of coffee and did a circuit of the whole terminal building before being able to check-in and move on through to departures. The time went fairly quick as we had explored almost all of the airport and as far as they go Schiphol is pretty big. Unfortunately our flight was delayed which was a little irritating but we coped, the flight itself was unremarkable and we got back to England at about 9pm to arrive home at about 10pm. It was good to get home and relax, this had been probably the most exhausting holiday I’ve ever had – so much travelling and so many different places.

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