All of the
last-minute cleaning and tidying meant that Kate and I didn't manage
to get to bed until after 1.30am last night – and were then awoken
at 4am to start all over again. All of our bedding was bagged up and
plonked outside, along with a few more boxes of miscellaneous
detritus, and then we all shouldered our overpacked backpacks, shut
the door on our life in the UK and trudged down to the coach station.
By 5.30am we were on our way to London, and all soon fast asleep
again.
Two hours later,
after being dropped off at Victoria Coach Station, we got our
bearings and walked to Victoria tube station, which was absolutely
teeming. We let the first train go without us as it was so packed,
and then staked out a spot at the end of a carriage in the second,
shedding our backpacks in a big heap as we made our way to Kings
Cross St Pancras. Once there, we staked out a new spot on a bench and
grabbed some breakfast. Then Kate and I spent a slightly surreal few
minutes reading, signing and posting off our application for a
buy-to-let mortgage.
By now it was time
to go through security and into the Eurostar waiting area. After
passing passport control Kate suddenly exclaimed, 'Where's my
jacket?', then laughed and said, 'And my backpack!' Having put
everything through the x-ray machine, she had blithely walked off
without either of them. 'I thought it all felt a bit lighter...'
The Eurostar journey
to Brussels (which also took two hours) gave us another chance to get
some sleep and then we had to make our first frantic connection for
the train to Cologne. Thankfully, it passed without incident, we
found our seats and settled in for the journey to our third country
of the day.
On arrival, we
headed out of the station and then stopped to admire the very
impressive cathedral that towers above it. Unfortunately, the map
that Kate had printed out was incomplete; thankfully, when we
wandered over to a map we spotted nearby, Kate spotted our hostel,
and a short walk later, we were checking in.
We spent the
remainder of the afternoon having a bit of a look around –
wandering around the cathedral and down to the Rhine, where Kate and
I had a very welcome beer each and we all shared a bowl of fries. For
dinner, we trooped back to the station, where we scoffed down a
bratwurst each (and used a peculiar bit of 'authorised graffiti' on
the wall for an impromptu School of Mum and Dad lesson), before
heading back to the hostel for showers and some more much-needed
slumber.
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