Eindhoven; Saturday, 01 November, 2014

At an hour that even for a weekday morning would be a little early, but for a Saturday was positively obscene, I was woken by my alarm, staggered through the shower and after quickly dressing and repacking headed over to the terminal building.

A smooth journey through the airport and everyone was on the plane with a good 10 minutes to spare before we were due to push back. 20 minutes later we were still sat there as the pilot informed us of a technical problem with the plane, which took another 20 minutes to fix. That should have been it and on our way, but due to the inefficiencies of the ground-handling agent we had to wait nearly an hour before we were finally pushed back and on our way.

Having arrived at Schiphol and walked the miles from the plane to the baggage reclaim hall and then the station it was only to be confronted with the very odd sight of the usually efficient Dutch railway system in meltdown.

Weekend engineering works (something I fear the British subsidiary Abellio has infected the parent company with) meant there were no direct trains from the airport into the centre of Amsterdam, and consequently all other trains were very busy and slightly chaotic, but things had been made much worse by an “overhead line problem in the Delft area”, which had wiped out services, with many either cancelled or running up to 90 minutes late.

Eventually, by changing trains in Utrecht, I finally made it Eindhoven nearly 4 hours later than planned, but at least without having to worry about storing my luggage before I was able to checkin to the hotel as by now checkin was open.

After dropping my stuff off I went for a long wander around the city centre, stopping off for a visit to the stunning Van Abbemuseum.

After the gallery I continued having a wander around town, before heading to a restaurant for an early dinner having just realised that I hadn’t actually eaten since a British Airways breakfast at around 9am.

Dinner finished I went for a bit more of a wander before heading back to the hotel for a quick drink in the bar and then bed.