I left work at 12.45pm and went home.

I had packed already so I just showered and had some lunch and then caught the tube to Liverpool Street station.
There I had to catch the Stansted Express to Stansted Airport.

I was a bit early because I didn’t know how long it would take but I checked in and went through security and got a coffee and a magazine and watched the planes take off.

Easy Jet, the airline that I flew with, doesn’t allocate seats.
You just get on the plane and pick your own.
I got a window seat which was nice.
You don’t get served food either.

I thought I recognised a lady on the plane as being from TV or something like that.
Then the announcement went over that there was a BBC crew on board.
They didn’t do any filming though that I saw.

Once we were up in the air we were basically on the way down again.
The flight lasted 40 minutes which I thought was quite funny as it took be about a hour and a half to get from my house to the airport!

I met a nice Australian lady in baggage collection and neither of us knew where to go so between us we managed to get the train and into Amsterdam without too much trouble.

I then pulled out my directions from the train station to the hostel.
I had to take a tram to a particular stop in the city.
The driver was very helpful and stopped and called out that it was my stop for me otherwise I would have been a bit lost.

The hostel - Rotterdam (two photos)

View from her room - Amsterdam (two photos)

The hostel dorm - Amsterdam

It was a short walk then to the hostel and I checked in.
It was about 11.00pm by the time I got organised.
I was in a mixed dorm and there are lockers in the hostel too.
I quite liked it as we all got a locker so all our bags were in the lockers and we basically just slept in the rooms.
It was handy particularly when people got up early to leave that they weren’t rustling through plastic bags and zipping zips at all hours.
It was all done outside the room.

The hostel has a bar so I went down and had a pint at the bar.
I met two very nice American guys - Skyler and Noah.
They weren’t travelling together but I think they both spent a bit of time at the bar.
They were quite friendly with the bar staff too so I chatted to everyone for a little while.