Getting lost in Nether Netherland

On Saturday I ventured into Amsterdam with Georgie to catch up with her cousin who is doing some travelling at the moment. On our way back to the train station in the afternoon we took a wrong turn.

somewhere.

i don't know where.

but it was a fatal mistake.

especially as we had no map.

we spent the next hour wandering the streets completely lost. the worst part was that all three of us were in denial and kept thinking we were on the right path.... so instead of asking someone walking past which way we needed to go to central station we just kept on walking and making turns which kept turning out to be the wrong ones.

finally, as the sky started to turn dark and i realised we might end up missing for days and starving to death on the outskirts of amsterdam (ok maybe that is being a bit dramatic) i decided to ask a shop assistant which way to central station. he pointed us in the direction saying "this is the short way"... and 40 minutes later we made it.

so, I thought the worst was over as I snuggled into my 2nd class seat on the train back to Rotterdam with Georgie. Oh, how I was wrong.

an hour and a half later (we caught the train with possibly the most stops along the way ever recorded) we were in Rotterdam and met Nick at the train station. we headed outside and jumped on the tram (after deciphering with great difficulty what direction we wanted to go in) no. 8. we thought we'll have a quick stopover at the supermarket and then head to Georgie's place for dinner and then out.

Unfortunately our stop never seemed to arrive. and when we enquired from the conductor when the 'oostplein' stop would arrive we were told we were going in "completely the wrong direction". ok. wonderful.

So we hopped off at the next tram stop to wait for the same tram but going in the opposite direction. At this point we noticed a supermarket so we went in for a quick shop (which added about another 5kg on top of the 10kg worth of shopping we had carried around in Amsterdam) and came back to the tram stop.

Finally the tram no. 8 came and we jumped on saluting ourselves on getting our direction correct this time. Oh, how I was wrong. again.

When we noticed our stop didn't seem to be coming again we asked the conductor to enlighten us:

"oh this tram changed route about a month ago... you are on the totally wrong track"

ooooooohhhhhh.

So we went back to central station and waited for the correct tram there. we almost went in the wrong direction again, but luckily we asked the conductor BEFORE the tram started moving (we're thinkers!). so anyway, we waited for the right tram...which came about 20 minutes later.

I'm traumatised by the experience, but happy to report that we made it to Georgie's place and did get to eat some food that night.

To add insult to injury tram tickets here are only valid for one hour... so we ended up validating our tickets three times that night just trying to get to Georgie's place (mind you it's a 20 minute walk from the train station) and then back into the city.