{"id":295,"date":"2014-08-08T14:12:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T18:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/?p=295"},"modified":"2014-11-18T16:05:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T21:05:43","slug":"august-7-from-holland-to-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/august-7-from-holland-to-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"August 7: From Holland to the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Groningen<\/a>

Groningen Railway Station, Northeast Corner of the Netherlands<\/p><\/div>\n

Next day we traveled from Groningen, in northeast Holland, to London by train.<\/p>\n

We had to change trains twice, once in Rotterdam with only a 13-minute connection, and again in Brussels on the Eurostar.\u00a0 We were concerned about the tight schedule and our voluminous luggage, besides the possibility that any train delay might cause us to miss the Eurostar, so we took an early train from Groningen.\u00a0 That train was perfectly on time and we had no trouble making our connection in Rotterdam\u2019s brand new train station with lots of elevators.<\/p>\n

Theoretically we now had lots of time to make our connection in Brussels.\u00a0 But trouble started as we crossed into Belgium.\u00a0 Our train went slower and slower and finally came to a halt in a small train station due to \u201ctechnical problems with the locomotive\u201d.\u00a0 Apparently, these things have been designed by Microsoft, because they made an announcement that the locomotive had to be rebooted, before we were on our way again, arriving in Brussels 30 minutes late.<\/p>\n

Because we had taken an early train from our starting point in the morning, we thought we had plenty of time and had a quick lunch in the Brussels train station.\u00a0 Then we went to the Eurostar train in plenty of time, or so we thought.<\/p>\n

However, once there, we had to go through British customs.\u00a0 No problem for me, with my European Union passport, but they made P.J stand in another line and fill out an entry form.\u00a0 That line came to a near complete halt because a person ahead of her apparently had an immigration problem.\u00a0 The EU passport line had long since dissolved, until, with only 10 to 15 minutes to spare (including having our luggage scanned and inspected), the other customs officers finally decided to help out.<\/p>\n

We had to hurry to make it, and finally sank in our seats, sweaty and hot, shortly before the train\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

\"200-mph<\/a>

200-mph Eurostar Train, Splattered with Mud<\/p><\/div>\n

Brussels to London by train takes two hours at speeds up to 200 mph.\u00a0 When we were paralleling expressways, it looked like cars were going backwards.<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>

St. Pancras Railway Station, London<\/p><\/div>\n

Photos \u00a9 2014 P.J. Gardner<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next day we traveled from Groningen, in northeast Holland, to London by train. We had to change trains twice, once in Rotterdam with only a 13-minute connection, and again in Brussels on the Eurostar.\u00a0 We were concerned about the tight … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1263,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/1263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pjgardner.com\/travel2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}