Low-cost midlife crisis

All the trains from Rotterdam in the direction of Calais were fully booked up with no reservations to be had. One of the issues with the app is that it doesn’t really offer up alternatives when this happens so you have to try and come up with alternatives by chopping the journey into chunks, or, the better option, speaking to someone in the ticket office who seem to be unfailingly helpful and cheerful.

I had the slight fear that this would leave us on another seat-free journey a fear that was compounded when an announcement came on the tannoy at Rotterdam station that the train to Brussels that was soon to arrive was overcrowded and people travelling domestically in the Netherlands should try and find a different route to their destination. However, this proved to be a bit overexaggerated and there were seats for more or less everyone as far as I could tell.

Another aside about the app – it renders everywhere in Belgium in French which is dead confusing in places which are nearly always rendered in Flemish. Today’s trip took us through Anvers, for example, which I’d never heard of, until we got there and I realised it was Antwerp.

Our route today was Rotterdam to Brussels to Tournai to Lille. The last of those legs turned out to be on our first rail replacement bus of the trip. Obviously everyone hates rail replacement buses but it felt like a bit of variety and the driver was a bit of a trip.

Anyway, we arrived safe and sound in Lille, which turns out to be a gorgeous place, much to my surprise. Also our hostel turns out to be around the corner from De Gaulle’s birthplace. I had no idea he was from Lille. Was he a ch’ti? (to be honest I’d never been interested in knowing where he was born, so it’s not like I always imagined he was from Paris or Carcassonne or Brest or somewhere)

Tomorrow we brave Brexit Britain. Wish us luck