Anderson Family Big Holiday Adventure: Departing Moscow and arriving in Amsterdam via Tallinn

Departing Moscow and arriving in Amsterdam via Tallinn

We had a real lazy morning in the hotel room and checked out at 12pm the latest you could check out!

Beautiful walk to the metro station

We have had a few ‘lost in translation’ moments and this was one of them at the airport express train ticket desk but Colin is getting help from the woman behind who is translating for him, thank you kind lady. We have got our ticket now and head for the train

The train was leaving in 5 minutes so most of the seats were gone so we perch in between the seats, it’s not supposed to be far to the airport but we didn’t realise we were on the slowest train we have ever been on!!! This train is going slower than the taxi driver!!!

So home schooling normally takes place at home right, but with us not officially having a home we have to grab opportunities when they arise, here is Amy doing some Maths work!

We have made it to the airport, yippee!

Last chance for a Russian sticker and it is a sad face Mr and Miss A L

We have just found a magnet that we could glue onto Amy’s suitcase, one happy bunny JJJ

Estonian Airlines blue aeroplane in the background – we are Tallinn bound, half an hour turnaround in Tallinn and then board our flight to Amsterdam

Incredibly steep steps up into the aeroplane

Bye Bye Moscow!

We were a little concerned about our suitcases getting from one aeroplane to the other with us only having half an hour between flights but we landed at gate 8 and boarded on gate 2 so they might have wheeled our suitcases along the tarmac!! We had to get off the flight, through security again and then board the next flight, easy had loads of time!!

Onto the next flight!!

Amy normally sits at the window seat, me next and to her and then Colin sits next to us across the aisle but this flight has empty seats so he can get his wish and have a window seat, happy Colly J

Tallinn from the air looking over the old town and at the cruise ships in dock, that was us last week!

Excited faces we are just about to land in Amsterdam

Coming into land

We have made it to Amsterdam

Next we need to jump on a train to Central Station, we’ve got the tickets we are sorted

Now here is our first mistake in the photograph

I saw Central station on the big screen upstairs and it said platform 5-6 so we head to platform 5-6 but when you get there there are two platforms 5 and 6! So Platform 5 had Centraal written on it as you can see in the photo and platform 6 had Brussels written on it. So we get on Centraal as we are heading to Central station but when we are away to start moving and a few people run off the train and go onto the Brussels train instead, mmmm that unnerves us! Ok there are big screens on the train telling us the stations and times we arrive and we know it roughly takes 20 minutes but oh no the Centraal we are heading to is taking 50 minutes, now doubt is in our minds and the train has left the station! The ticket lady comes along and then says I am really sorry you are on the wrong train, oh dear so she sits down next to us and works out where we should get off, our connection time and platform for us, thank you for being so nice lady!! Oh dear we are so disappointed in ourselves for getting on the wrong train but it had to happen at some point as we have done really well so far and we are over 5 weeks into our adventure. I am sure it won’t be the last time that this will happen!! The conductor is cool and says don’t worry about it just sit back and enjoy the scenery!! So we end up at ………

Leiden Centraal and then wait for our next train to take us direct to Central station in Amsterdam! We jumped back on the train and we were sitting across from an Irish girl who also made the same mistake, she was on our train and had the same conductor redirect her too, it must happen a lot I think!! It wouldn’t have been so bad if we were staying in a hotel as you can pitch up at anytime but we are meeting a guy to let us into our apartment. The arrangements were that we had to text him when we cleared customs and he would meet us there so Colin rang him and apologised that we would be later than expected!!!! He was okay with that so that was good!! Now we are heading in the right direction, phew!!

Just looking out of the window and then we see someone has delivered an ‘A’ to us to remind us that we are Andersons and according to our Anderson fridge magnet that we used to have on our fridge which is now on a boat somewhere heading towards Australia the Anderson motto is supposed to be ‘Stand Sure’ so that is exactly what we will do!! Move on from our mistake and remember to stand sure and regain our confidence as we will get to our apartment and we are doing extremely well with all our travels :o)

Always a positive in everything -

At least we get time to photograph Amy’s wish list for Amsterdam though J

We arrived at Central Station in Amsterdam yippee!!!!!

Carlos the guy we are renting the apartment from told us to get a taxi from the train station to the apartment but he told us to get a specific taxi and there isn’t one of those around. We were supposed to be arriving to our apartment around 8.30pmish but it is now 10pm-ish. We see a tram that we could take so we decide to go with that instead. We now can’t find a ticket machine but it is a bit dark for this malarkey!! We head over to the tram and there is someone on the tram selling tickets, we are sorted!! I jump on and ask if the tram goes to Marnixstraat but I forgot the name and missed out the ‘r’ in the middle of the word so the woman looks at me as if I have two heads but another passenger helps me out and said I had good pronunciation of the road we needed to get to, thanks Mr that helped us out, the lady ticket seller must have been having a bad day!! We get the tickets and then jump on, it only takes about 5 minutes well that was easy!! Now we have directions that we printed off before we left Isle of Man to figure out our way to the apartment. We are nearly at our turn off and a homeless guy helps us and shows us the right way which we were going in anyway so our confidence is coming back now!!!

We cross a beautiful canal and then head down the Marnixstraat to the apartment we are looking for 241

Oh this photo is a bit blurry as Col was moving when I took the photo so we are trying to go down the pavement and it isn’t cobbles like Brugge we are tackling with it is bicycles and scooters on the pavement that are making our lives difficult!! The place is just full of bicycles but this takes the biscuit as we need to squeeze through this small space between a scooter and bicycles!!

We find the apartment okay and thankfully Carlos and Herbert live upstairs so that eases our guilt for getting lost and being late. We are on first floor up tiny spiral staircase but hallelujah there is a lift, woop woop!! We head up and get a tour of the apartment from Herbert, get shown how to work the washing machine, coffee machine, TV ooohhh how exciting, washing!!!! But just look at the view we have got from our living room, this has been well worth it!! Excited to wake up in the morning now to see what the view looks like in daylight!

Colin is checking out the maps and info Carlos and Herbert have left for us and Amy is checking out the kid’s channels on the TV!! Priorities peeps it is 11pm, bedtime!! And remember we lost 2 hours today so if we were still in Moscow it would be 1am so that means BED!!