Today we took the train from Lyon to Amsterdam. There had been a train strike in France beginning April 1, with the strikers walking off the job two days out of every five. But France being the civilized society that it is, the strikers published a calendar showing all of the days they would be on strike. Due to the luck of our travel schedule we were not affected by the strike, nor were any of our visitors.
We took the French high-speed train to Brussels, where we transferred to another train to Amsterdam. We sat in an outdoor cafe across the street from the Brussels train station while waiting for our transfer, and while we were there three large Belgian military vehicles rolled up and a bunch of soldiers with machine guns jumped out. It seemed like a routine patrol and, much like in France, the visible presence of security made us feel safe.
We waited for our train to Amsterdam…and waited…and waited. Eventually all of us got on the next available train to Amsterdam (only about an hour later). The rumor was that our scheduled train had never left its origin in Paris due to a bomb scare. That made sense, also, since we had seen the soldiers arrive at the train station earlier.
We eventually reached Amsterdam in the early evening. Our hotel was in a great location, just across the canal from the Leidseplein and only a couple of blocks from Vondelpark and the Rijksmuseum. We were ready to explore Amsterdam.
Video of the French countryside from the high speed train – It is a large file and takes a minute to download. Click on “img_6427”, then click on the the small white type in the black box to start the download. The video does not work properly for us using Firefox so try a different browser if you have problems.
