Amsterdam ferry

[evil_mel]

So I'm back from a long weekend in Amsterdam.  It was a good weekend, but I don't feel too inclined to write about it.  What I will mention is my experience of getting the ferry.

The ferry goes from Harwich to the Hook of Holland and we went for the overnight option.  You get the train from Liverpool Street to Harwich which takes about 1 hour 20

Comments

[dancingpuppet]

Thanks for the feedback on your trip, I will definitely consider this option to go to Holland or Denmark at some point.

How far is Harwich station from the ferry pier? Do you have to be there a long time before boarding to get passports checked/etc.? Is it about 30mn like for Eurostar boarding or longer?

And yeah, traveling by plane is too much of a hassle when you go with more than just hand luggage. I suppose on a week-end trip everything can fit within one bag but it's still a pain having to get to the airport, go through security, etc. That being said, City Airport is love and too few people know about it, thinking that all flights are bare spense when in fact some are reasonably priced.

[evil_mel]

The ferry pier is pretty much inside Harwich station. As for the boarding time, I believe it took about 25 minutes but we were just in front of a big group of students so it probably varies quite a bit! You're supposed to get there 45 minutes before it leaves, but it doesn't feel like waiting seeing that it's overnight anyway (think you can get there from 8pm). Btw the train ticket you get is valid from any Greater Anglia station so it includes Cambridge.

I'll have to look at flights from City Airport next time seeing that you've recommended it. It's really close to where I work so that might be a good option if it's less annoying than normal airports.

[dancingpuppet]

I'm not in Cambridge anymore, next time we're in England we're likely to travel from Dartford if we're just here on holidays. We're about to move to Doha for a couple of years so I'm not sure exactly if we will get to do any traveling in Europe in the near future. Anyway, looking forward to finally exploring the Middle East/Asia a bit more!

[potatoprint]

We used to travel from Harwich to Hamburg on school trips. Gods, they didn't check kids for ID when buying booze at all.

Mind you they never checked our passports either, just asked our teacher if we had them.

[evil_mel]

Haha I wish my school trips had been like that!

[dancingpuppet]

There's a ferry to Hamburg too? Cool, I've been meaning to go back there for ages, I really liked it when we went there on a school trip for 2 weeks. ^_^

[potatoprint]

There is, it takes 20 hours!

[dj_damien]

I need to look into going in June.