Amsterdam - Düsseldorf.

On day 7, I woke up early and began the tedious process of travelling onward. I packed, checked out and quickly tried to navigate a new metro system to one of the obscure and inconvenient locations that Flixbuses so often use. For anyone who is unaware of Flixbus, they are a low budget bus company that operates all throughout Europe (and some of Asia as well), offering long distance rides for extremely cheap prices. For example, this trip going from Antwerp to Amsterdam was costing me only £5 for a three hour journey. Up until this point, the two rides I had taken with them had seemed an absolute steal; there were some minor issues on the trip from London to Paris, but overall for the price I was more than getting my moneys worth. However, perhaps my somewhat good fortune caught up with me, and I ended up having to wait over two hours for a bus that never came. Luckily since this was a relatively short distance journey there were very frequent options. I also met a guy who was going the same way as me, so after some non-existent customer service we decided to hop back on the metro and go and find one of the other buses.

Waterloo Station, Amsterdam

Eventually, around three hours later than planned, we arrived in Amsterdam and went our separate ways temporarily to our hostels. After a quick nap and a shower, I headed back into the centre to meet up with him. Walking around with my camera, I perhaps started to forget where I was but was quickly reminded when I heard a loud banging on glass right next to my head on the side of the street; I had just been jump scared by a prostitute. It actually took me a few minutes to work out what had happened but when I remembered what Amsterdam was famous for I felt a bit stupid for walking (unknowingly) through the Red Light district with my camera.

About 30 seconds before I was jump scared

Finally I met up with my friend, and we went on a mini bar crawl for a few hours; my first impressions of Amsterdam were exactly how you might expect.

However, my travel difficulties for the day were not over. I had booked a hostel quite a long way out of the centre, favouring cost over convenience, and this meant I still had a metro to catch on the way back. The metros in Amsterdam run pretty late, so when I got to the station at 11:30 there were still two more trains for me to catch - one at 11:45 and one at 12:15. It got to 11:45 and the screen was pretty clear that the train had arrived, but there was nothing on the platform so I wrongfully assumed that it would arrive in the next few seconds. It was only when I looked across to the opposite side of the platform that I realised the train actually had arrived and was leaving.

I had been a bit distracted with my phone and maybe the few pints I’d had on an empty stomach had cost me some concentration, but I accepted my mistake and went over to sit on the other side of the platform. By this point I can’t lie, I was absolutely desperate for the toilet, but nevertheless I waited the half an hour. So eventually it came to 12:15, I looked at the screen and it said the train was here. But it wasn’t, so quite stupidly I waited a few seconds for it to arrive only to look back at the original platform and see it was now leaving.

I ran out the station and found a very conveniently placed dark alley to use. Feeling very relieved but also quite embarrassed, I prepared myself for the 9km walk back to my hostel from the centre. When I made it back at 3am I fell asleep very quickly.

The next day was another day of walking around solo, and again I felt more and more comfortable and accepting of the fact I was actually doing what I had been planning. I met up with my friend again at about 4pm and we found a canal cruise. We walked around for a long time, trying to get more of a taste of what Amsterdam has to offer, and finally parted ways at about 11. Luckily I had learned my lesson this time, and successfully got on the metro back to the hostel.

The next stop had been very difficult to decide on. Originally I had planned to stop in Frankfurt or Cologne to then go onwards to Munich, but all the travel routes seemed very expensive and very indirect. So instead I booked onto a bus towards Düsseldorf and found another cheap hostel (closer to the centre this time). I was starting to feel tired, and knowing I still had an almost incomprehensible distance ahead of me, I decided to take things easy for the next couple of days before I moved onwards further. In the end, I just walked around the city, found a few different pubs and watched some youtube; a very uneventful couple of days in perspective.

Overall, I wasn’t really the biggest fan of Düsseldorf. Maybe I just got unlucky, but the locals that I interacted with were very unfriendly and it seemed very expensive for what was a very small city. However, it was interesting to see their preparation for the Euros, and I still felt like I was making a lot of progress on my journey.

So Far:

Days: 10

Countries: 4

Stops: 6

Distance Travelled: 1010 miles/ 1625km