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We checked out of our hotel and used the hotel shuttle to get to Gare du Nord. We deliberately arrived early in order to purchase snacks for on the train. We had booked first class seats on the Thalys, but wanted to be prepared in case we weren’t happy with the supplied food. I had already emailed Thalys, and been told that even though we were on a train leaving at 10.30am and not arriving until 1.45pm, we would not be served lunch but rather a light snack. If I had known this prior to making the train reservations I would not have booked first class, but too late to change once I found out.
We purchased some baguettes with ham and cheese and sat back to people watch and wait. Unfortunately the two trains before ours had been cancelled, but ours was running, albeit running late. I went to customer service to enquire which platform it would be on and was told that the people from the cancelled trains would also be on ours, but as we had reserved seats we had the right to sit in our own seats, with people from the cancelled train only able to
sit in empty seats or to stand.
I posted the story regarding the debacle of the train trip in the Train Travel forum while I was on the train – here is the link for anyone who is interested in reading. You will find my posts at the end.
http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ShowTopic-g1-i12483-k5224125-Thalys_Customer_Service_a_nightmare-Train_Travel.html#44173159 We finally arrived into Amsterdam, we found ourselves a taxi and got to our hotel, Banks Mansion. Here is a link to my Trip Advisor review of Banks Mansion :
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g188590-d230616-r146459930-Banks_Mansion-Amsterdam_North_Holland_Province.html. The hotel was superb and more than made up for the terrible journey getting here. We checked in to our lovely canal view room, unpacked a few things and went straight out for a walk around the local area, followed by a canal cruise.
The canal cruise was wonderful. We caught it on Rokin, which was closest to our hotel and it cost around €9 each. We purchased a glass of wine and sat in the sunshine, watching Amsterdam go by. I strongly recommend doing a canal cruise to get your bearings if you are a first time visitor to Amsterdam.
We returned to Banks Mansion for their regular late afternoon cheese and wine session,
before freshening up and setting out to find our restaurant for dinner – Restaurant Red. We had some trouble finding it, as others have mentioned on Tripadvisor and had to return to the hotel to get directions. We eventually found it, and it doesn’t have any signage and it is actually green, not red! I ate the steak, which was absolutely delicious, probably the best steak I have eaten in Europe, where I find the steaks to be a lot tougher than here in Australia. Gary had the lobster, but he wasn’t quite as thrilled. To be fair though, it was a hot cooked lobster, rather than cold, which he doesn’t enjoy as much. The cost of Red is very reasonable – our meal came to €70 including a nice bottle of wine. Back to Banks Mansion, where we could help ourselves to a Baileys and coffee from the open complementary bar before a good nights sleep.
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