Day 33--Efteling and London

 We had a morning at Efteling before starting our return trip to London. I woke up feeling pretty sick with a bad cold, so I slept in and had breakfast late.

Donnie, Andy and the girls had some fun final moments at the park before we headed back to the train station and began our very long trip into London.


Donnie and Gracelyn on a family-friendly coaster


Donnie and Elise on the beautiful dark ride once more


Elise points out a magical carousel for smaller kiddos


The little kid area is for kids of all ages!




Good thing they had fun, because the travel ahead was pretty awful.






Loads of stops between Amsterdam and Brussels. We had planned to put our bags into a locker and explore during our three hour layover, but it was not to be. The lockers were all full. So we hung out (with all our luggage)  in one of the only train station restaurants with AC and got the girls a Belgian waffle.


We finally boarded the Eurostar and were on our way back to London. As usual, boarding Eurostar was a little rough, but the ride was super smooth. 




Which was such a blessing. Because once we arrived in London, it took an hour to get to our Airbnb via Uber. The Airbnb was so incredibly hot, and the promised AC was only in the basement. The place was also dirty and had weird smells. No one was feeling optimistic about staying.




I got in touch with Airbnb, and they were unable to do anything else. The owners suggested we tough it out with fans and open windows; it had been 89 degrees in London that day with 30% humidity. The fans were also quite old and ineffective. I asked for a full refund as the house was not inhabitable. By some miracle, we were granted our refund, and I was able to find a place 45 minutes away with enough beds and full AC in each room.  It was twice the cost of our terrible Airbnb, but we didn’t mind at all. We found an amazing, funny Uber driver who came and got us at 10:30pm and cracked jokes the whole ride. Bless him forever! 

We got to bed at about 1am, completely exhausted but so grateful. The adults all slept in one room in single beds. The two girls got the primary bedroom with the en-suite bath. 


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