Ready. Steady. Go - Trains and More Trains

Saturday 22 July

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives and we have spent most of it on trains. Jean and Ray arrived promptly at 6.00 this morning and swiftly transported us to Waterloo after fond farewells and hugs ‘n kisses with Nick and Adam (who tells me he will be 5 when I see him again!). Booking in at Eurostar took all of five minutes and we were raring to go by 6,45 a.m. The train left on time at 8.39 a.m.!

Having partaken of a fine breakfast on Eurostar, we arrived at Brussels and found our new platform with no trouble at all - a good navigator in the party. The train from Brussels to Cologne sped along, reaching over 150 miles an hour for much of the journey (just a bit faster than me in my little red car – but we won’t mention that to Colin).

We arrived at Cologne on the platform we would leave from an hour later, but I had to satisfy my craving for junk food and an injection of grease – well we are going to be fine dining and out to posh restaurants for the next six weeks and I don’t think there’s any chance of a McDonalds along the way! – so we had a tour round and found Burger King! The stations are all like massive shopping centres, you don’t need to shop anywhere else – I think you can buy anything - and they are bigger than Bluewater!

The train from Cologne left about 15 minutes late, but was nearly an hour late by the time we reached Berlin. Perhaps British Rail is not so different from other services. But the cleanliness and comfort was superb and here was never more than six of us in a compartment. All the hours spent downloading to my MP4 player were worth it – I have now used up the battery and its recharging as I speak. It was dark when we reached Berlin and can honestly say that during the 20 minute hairy/scary taxi ride we didn’t see a lot of the sites!!! That’s to come tomorrow. We’ve had a couple of beers and some peanuts (all food places are closed now, so its lucky I had my burger) and now we are settling in for the night.

We were quite concerned when we read the reports on Trip Advisor for our hotel – Golden Tulip – but I suppose some people always complain. Its very friendly, the room is more than comfortable and the bathroom is all mod cons. It will do us nicely for the couple of days we are here.

All in all we have had a really good start to our “holiday” and all credit goes to Margaret for the arrangements. Colin is looking forward to breakfast (will there be ten courses like he had at Aldborough?) Then it’s off to Check Point Charlie and the Berlin Wall (just a little appetizer before the big Wall in China) on the open top bus – weather permitting – been a bit showery and a bit sunny but mostly dull today – to see the sights. But now its 1.00 a.m. and time for bed.

Goodnight . . . .