Day 1 - 19/06/23

 Day 1 of our interrailing adventure began bright and early at 6am, as my mum gave 3 very sleep deprived boys a lift to Raynes Park station. From there, we went straight to St. Pancreas International and after what seemed like hours of queuing for passport control, we finally made it to our 8:16 train to Amsterdam Centraal. Unfortunately, as we had not booked our tickets at the same time, I was in a different seat to everyone else, a fact made worse by the fact that I was sat next to 4 very noisy girls (they would continue to be noisy for the rest of the 4 hour journey). Luckily, the eurostar is incredibly speedy, so before I knew it we had arrived in Amsterdam for the first stop on our trip!

In the weeks leading up to this trip, we have often hotly debated whether or not a suitcase or a backpack would be the ideal method of transportation, with me believing that since most of the cities we are seeing will have pavements anyway, a suitcase would be better. I believe I made the right decision, as we made our way on to an incredibly crowded metro, and Dan was forced to carry his heavy bag on his back for the entire 20 minute journey. 

After arriving at the hostel, we made the realisation that the entire hostel was themed around the film ‘The Big Lebowski’, with various murals, paintings, and quotes from the film being decorated around the place (I guess the owner must be a big fan?). After enjoying a nice, overpriced pint of pilsner at the hostel bar, we were invited into our rooms, in which we were greeted by 4 bunk beds surrounded by various traveler junk. As of writing this, I am yet to meet any of these people except for a Kiwi woman who spoke to us very briefly, who I suspect to be the same person who is snoring extremely loudly above me currently.

After a quick shower to wash off the stench of the Amsterdam metro during summer, we got settled in and went back to the station to go to the centre again. Luckily, the hostel we are staying in is right next to a university campus, so outside the station was a shop selling very cheap cans of lager, which we took with us for the journey. 

After arriving back in central Amsterdam, we wandered around a bit to see the sights before settling in a nice bar to enjoy some of Amsterdam’s famous Heinekens. Then we went to the Moco museum, which was a very interesting art gallery which had some original Banksy works as well as some interesting light displays. After this, we had some dinner and at this point the 5 hours of sleep we were all functioning off of started to catch up with us, so we decided to head back to the hostel to catch a relatively early night.