Today was day 30 of our Topdeck Discover “Dicover” Europe. This meant that it was our last day and all was left is to travel the four countries back to London. It was an early start with an 0730 departure from the Botel in Amsterdam. We travelled on the bus for four and half hours with no service stops. This was the longest stint non stop of the entire jorney. Because of traffic we arrived in Brugge around an hour and half late. This left us with only an hour to explore. Pretty much this gave us enough time to find a magnet and get lunch. We found and purchased a fridge magnet in five minutes. All the restraunts were expensive so Rhian and I walked around for half an hour before giving up and just going to pizza hut. After lunch it was time to get back on the bus.
Our next leg was to the Port in Calis in France. We arrived around 1530. We were due to get onto the 4pm ferry however it turned out the ferry was running an hour late so we actually left at around 5pm. This was the last stop for our bus driver Krzys. Sad to say goodbye he weas an awsome bus driver for the last month. Probably because his Polish. He was eager to get home to his pregnant wife and child. He drove us a total of 7,950kms around Europe and said himself he enjoyed this group., It was like travelling with mates not clients.
The weather across the English Channel was not very good today. Was very choppy but the ferry had stabilizers. This apparently eased it somewhat. I didn’t look out the window. Wasn’t helpful. We reached Dover port about 1830. We walked of the ferry and onto our waiting shuttle bus. This was an old shitty bus compared to the limo we travelled Europe in.
The bus ride into London and to the Umi hotel seemed to go on for a long time. We managed to watch an entire movie in the time it took to reach the Umi Hotel. We arrived at the Umi about 8pm. Sad moment saying good bye to all those we had spent the last thirty days with and those others we picked up along the way. Rhian and I both hope to see a large number of you again. After saying goodbe to everyone Rhian and I set off to catch the Underground to our hotel.
It didn’t take too long to reach our hotel however after arriving and trying to checking the fun began. We handed over our paperwork with the confirmation of our booking. When the assistant looked up our booking he told us to wait a moment while he went out the back. I turned to Rhian and said. He doesn’t have our booking. Sure enough when he returned he told us our booking was cancelled and showed us an email that stated our booking was cancelled on the 8th August. However our paper clearly stated our booking was valid and confirmed on the 17th August. The assistant agreed something didn’t add up. Short story is that we handed over the credit card to book a room and they just took a pre authorisation on the credit card until the mess could be sorted out. Upon getting to our room that was freezing. Rhian turned on the heater and it started to leak water over the floor. We called reception and they sent someone up to have look. It had stopped leaking and was working so they said they would have maintence come check it tomorrow.
By this time it was close to 11pm and Rhian finished writing her narky email to the travel agent about the booking screw up. We went across the road to a hotel for dinner. Food was ok and was not too expensive. After dinner we came back to the room and passed out.
