My Hovercraft Is Full Of Dutchmen - Getting to Amsterdam

In our ongoing search for new methods of transportation, we'd decided to take the ferry over to Holland the next day. This involved getting up early and getting ourselves from Heathrow to Harwich by 11:00. We got ourselves up at what we thought was an early-enough hour, partook of the free English breakfast buffet (I'm sorry, but to me Heinz baked beans are *not* a breakfast food), hopped the shuttle from the hotel to Heathrow, hopped on the Heathrow Express, hopped a tube to the correct train station, hopped a train to East Anglia, hopped another train to the port of Harwich, and by the time we'd finished all this hopping it was noon, and the morning ferry was long gone. Unfortunately, since there's only one boat, the next trip to Holland wasn't until 7:30 at night, so we were stuck in Harwich till then. (Harwich, by the way, is not pronounced "har-wich", as unsuspecting Yanks might assume, but is actually pronounced "hare-itch". Those wacky Brits...)

We decided to make the best of our enforced stay by doing our laundry - which by this time desperately needed doing. We figured the best chance of finding a laundromat (or laundrette, as they're known to the locals) was in the town of Harwich (two train stops from the port). So, Bonnie and I hopped the train again in search of a laundrette. Harwich Town is very small and very sleepy, and did not appear to have a laundrette upon our first inspection. However, a friendly clerk at the hardware store near the train station told us there was one in Dovercourt, the train stop in between the Harwich Town and the port. So, off we ran back to the train station to try to hop the return train to Dovercourt (it was one of those trains that just goes back and forth between a few stops). It was getting ready to pull out as we got to the platform, and just as Bonnie started opening the door it began to move. Not wanting to wait 45 minutes for the next departure, we went ahead and tried to get on it anyway. Thankfully, the engineer stopped the train so we could get on safely. Not long afterwards the conductor came into our car and gave us a stern lecture about how we were very naughty to try to get on a moving train, which is quite a dangerous thing to do. Having not been told I was naughty for doing something since I was in the single-digit age range, I nodded meekly and promised never to try to get on a moving train again.

Once in Dovercourt, we wandered around a few streets in an attempt to follow the hardware store clerk's directions, and finally gave up and asked directions again. Eventually, we found it - a bit grimy and shabby, but at least our clothes would be clean. I don't know if this one's prices were typical for England, or just taking advantage of being the only laundrette in three cities, but it was at least three times as expensive as a U.S. laundromat. Our laundry happily sudsing away, we decided to go for the total Britfood experience and get something from the chip shop nearby - fish & chips and steak & kidney pie (which had a far greater kidney to steak ratio than the versions I've had in the States). To kill a bit more time we strolled around the waterfront, admiring the statue of Queen Victoria looking formidably out across the North Sea.

Our mission accomplished, we went back to the port and freed Bena from the task of luggage-watching so she could go out and check out the town too. Settling in to read the local paper, apparently one of the hot topics of the day was the report of a fisherman who drowned when his boat was swamped by the high-speed hovercraft ferry to Holland - yes, the very one we were waiting to take.

The afternoon dragged on, and eventually more people started showing up at the ferry station to take the evening ferry. Soon after we'd checked in, a huge thunderstorm started kicking up. One lightning strike hit quite near the station, and in addition to making a huge amount of noise, it completely disabled the ferry line's computer ticketing system, forcing them to check in the rest of the waiting customers by hand. On top of that, the ferry was late getting in, due to both rough seas during the crossing and a restricted speed limit through the lengthy Harwich harbor (perhaps trying to ensure that no more fishing boats got swamped). By the time everyone got on and we got underway, it was nearly 9:00.

We staked out a table in a relatively non-smoky part of the ship, got some dinner, and settled down to try to get a little sleep during the crossing. High-speed hovercrafts are pretty smooth riding - even with somewhat rough seas, there was very little pitching about, and happily I didn't get too seasick (my tendency to motion sickness is legendary). The atmosphere wasn't too conducive to rest, though - even though we'd gotten a spot away from the casino and the bars, it was still very noisy, and there seemed to be a never-ending stream of people walking around the deck. Many were holding squalling small children (perhaps figuring the walk might calm them down). I swore that I kept seeing the same people over and over again, walking around and around the deck all through the trip. It was all very surreal - if Breughel, Bosch, or Escher were around now they'd feel right at home painting pictures of endless streams of Dutchmen pacing the deck of the Stena Line ferry.

The great majority of the passengers were Dutch - not too surprising, I guess, since it's a Dutch ferry line. Far less ethnically diverse even than the English, they all seemed to be huge and blond. Dutch is an interesting language to listen to - not quite German, not quite English, with surprisingly guttural consonants that sound like the speaker is trying to hack something nasty out of the back of their throat. (even more guttural than German, and that's going some)

I eventually managed to drop off to sleep for a bit, only to wake up abruptly in the middle of a screaming nightmare (in which trying to escape from hordes of people figured prominently). Not long after that we arrived at Hoek van Holland. Since our eventual destination was Amsterdam, and the ferry was late enough to miss the last train there, they'd helpfully gotten a bus for those of us headed that way. We spent an hour or so driving through the dark, flat, featureless Dutch landscape, and eventually were deposited in Amsterdam at Centraal Station at three in the morning. Centraal Station is a wacky old baroque building that's pretty surreal even in the daytime, let alone at 3:00 a.m. when you've had very little sleep. It was surrounded by bicycles (the preferred mode of transportation in Amsterdam), literally hundreds of them all piled up in front of the station.

We managed to hail a cab, and get him to take us to the B&B we were supposed to be staying at (luckily we'd called ahead to let them know we'd be getting in rather late :-) Sure enough, after a bit of knocking one of the hosts groggily let us in and showed us to our room. The place was a typical Amsterdam house - very tall and very narrow. Our room was the top floor, up an extremely narrow spiral staircase. We quickly figured out that we'd wake the whole house up if we tried to schlep all our luggage up those steps, so we abandoned it on the ground floor till morning. The room was actually two rooms - a top level bedroom and an attic bedroom and bath, reachable by a ladder. Bena took the attic level and Bonnie and I collapsed on the bed on the lower level, not stirring till late that morning.

Continuing with Amsterdam