This is the second of three posts I’m planning covering our trip to The Netherlands back in February/March. The first, which you can find here, was all about our visits to two aviation museums and some of Flevoland’s oldest and highest bits of land. This post is all about our visit to the Dutch capital itself, whilst the final post will be about spotting at Schiphol airport with a few other bits of The Netherlands thrown in.
Back at the end of February I was lucky enough to spend a few days in and around the Dutch capital. Essentially the visit was split into three, with our first full day spent visiting aviation museums with a bit of additional exploring in the evening; the second spent exploring Amsterdam; and our final day spent visiting a bit more of The Netherlands and spotting at Schiphol. I’ve decided that essentially, I’m going to split my blogs in the same manner and so this is the first of three posts covering my Dutch adventures.
Just five days after returning from Dublin, I was back at Birmingham airport to fly to Amsterdam and try another new airline, KLM. KLM is the Dutch flag carrier and in 2019 celebrated its 100th birthday, with the airline being the oldest in continuous operation with the same name. KLM operates up to five return flights a day from its Amsterdam hub to Birmingham and we were booked onto the early afternoon departure, which is generally operated by KLM subsidiary, KLM Cityhopper with one of their Embraer E-jets.
After an excellent but exhausting day in Hull, we were back at the city’s Paragon station well ahead of our train’s departure time. Unfortunately, Hull Trains doesn’t have any first-class lounges, including at Hull, and so we camped out in the Café Nero across the road for 45 minutes or so before heading across to the platforms.
On the north bank of the Humber estuary, not far from the North Sea coast and deep within East Riding of Yorkshire is Kingston-Upon-Hull, or Hull, a port city and UK City of Culture 2017. The title of City of Culture is held by a city for four years and so, in early January 2020, the final year of its tenure, we headed north to visit East Riding’s only city.
A cold and clear morning in January saw us up early and on our way to Grantham to catch a train. Although not our local station, most direct services to our final destination, Hull, don’t call at Peterborough and so we had driven one stop north to catch our train. For our journey today we were travelling with the home operator of East Riding, Hull Trains.
