The grandchildren’s story
Note from Silver Travel Advisor
In March 2015, we ran a competition in partnership with My InterRail to find 2 grandparents and 2 grandchildren who would be willing to spend 10 days travelling 1st class around the Benelux countries by InterRail and to keep a diary about their experiences. The winners were Grandparents Dennis and Maureen Walby. When we advised Dennis that he was the winner, the hardest job for him was to pick which of his 25 grandchildren to take! Lucky Lottie and Ollie (both aged 13) both made the grade.
Here are their journals from their trip taken in June 2015 which we hope you enjoy reading.
Lottie:
First we had to get up at 5.30 and got dressed and went to the train station to catch the Eurostar and go through France to Belgium. When we got there we had a tour around the school and it was really fun and really interesting!! After that we went to a restaurant near the hotel that we were staying in for the night. When we finished lunch we went back to the school and we had to finish the questions and then we were taken to a small room with two Belgium children and I had to ask them my questions and they had to answer them. Their names were Mariaoma and Charles. Next we were dropped off by the hotel and then we went around town. We went to an ice cream shop and bought a chocolate ice cream for me and Ollie. Gaby bought a stracciatella which is a white ice cream that has chocolate in it. After that we came back to the hotel and got changed into our swimming clothes and went downstairs by a lift and met up with Gaby and Dennis. After swimming we came back to our room and got changed after a nice warm relaxing shower. Then Gaby and Dennis brought in some goodies for dinner. Then Gaby and Dennis went downstairs to the bar for a few hours so I sat down and starting writing this and Ollie got into bed and kept calling me over to watch his favourite YouTubers. Tomorrow it is my first time going on a first class train, so we are catching that and going to Amsterdam to go to the Anne Frank museum and I’m really excited!
The next day, first we had to get up and dressed at 8:00, then went downstairs to the bar and had breakfast. We had so much chocolate it made us not want to look at it! Then we had to go upstairs and make sure we didn’t leave anything behind under the bed or in the bathroom. Then Gaby and Dennis came and opened the door and they asked up to come in there so we did and we planned the day. We went downstairs, checked out and said goodbye and left the hotel and went to the train station. After that we got on the train to go to the other hotel which was called Best Western Blue Square Hotel. We chose our beds because there were four of them in one room. I had the one by the window, then next to me was Gaby, after that there was a huge gap then it was Dennis, the Ollie was in the corner like he always is! We stayed up until 11:00, but it actually got to like half one in the morning!! Now I’m very tired! We had a really nice comfortable, deep sleep and woke up about 8:00 and got dressed and then we packed up for another exciting day.
First we checked out of that hotel and set off to catch the tram so that it could take us to Amsterdam centre. The queue for the Anne Frank museum was longer than last night and it went all around the block!! So we went back and caught the tram again and went to have some breakfast. I had pancakes with Nutella and cream, and me and Ollie both had a chocolate milkshake, they were scrummy! After breakfast we got a canal cruise around Amsterdam. It was really fun and interesting because at each bridge a man was talking about history. After the interesting cruise tour we went and got some lunch. I had a ham and mustard sandwich with some haribos and a mountain dew to drink.
In Belgium they are famous for chocolate! Belgian people like to ride bikes around because the country is very very very flat – there are no hills that we know of.
On one day it was really exciting because the train stopped and the police got on. We heard shouting and because some people were smoking they thought that the train was on fire!
Ollie:
Ollie:The best thing on the trip was the model in Hamburg. I really liked the little airport, with the planes landing and taking off. They had a giant bee which made everyone laugh. There were three separate fires, with appliances whizzing along the roads like trains without rails. There were hundreds of tiny people doing all sorts of things. Sometimes the made the lights dim so it was like night.
Oh, and I liked the trams because it meant we didn’t have to walk all the time!
The first hotel was great too. Chocolate for breakfast, a swimming pool, and I liked the school that we visited.
This trip was sponsored by My InterRail.
