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“Thoroughly enjoyable, efficient and well organised”

written by HeatherZM on 07/04/2014

I travelled with my mother from 03/04/14 to 06/04/14 on the Keukenhoff Gardens and Amsterdam trip, and we were both extremely happy with the whole experience. We were travelling from Cheshire.
We were collected at 6am by the feeder coach and reached Dover at around 1pm for the coach transfer. Throughout this leg of the trip we were given 3 stops to enable us to buy refreshments and have a comfort break. Drinks and snacks were also available on board so we definitely didn't go hungry! We were travelling silver service so were also able to take advantage of the lounge area at the back of the coach.
The transfer at Dover was extremely efficient and we then boarded our main coach with our new guides Cherie and Tim.
There had been some industrial action going on earlier in the day at Calais, but this really didn't have any impact on us and we were fully informed of the situation.
Ferry crossing was much better than I expected (I usually get motion sickness, I'd taken tablets which may have helped, but it was a really smooth crossing)
We arrived at Dover at around 3pm and then set off to the hotel (NT Capelle) near Rotterdam. We had a couple of stops and reached the hotel at around 9pm.

While Tim and the hotel porter sorted out our baggage, Cherie was busily sorting out our rooms and room keys and we were in our rooms by around 9:15pm. Extremely quick by any standard.
The hotel was really nice, very clean, good sized rooms, plenty of storage and our outlook was over the pond at the back of the hotel
Couple of downsides to the hotel, nothing major, but worth pointing out - tea and coffee making facilities were in the rooms but we had no milk and the only tea left out for us was fruit tea - the rooms were very warm and we had to open the window to try to cool it down whenever we were in there - breakfast was pretty basic but sufficient (I think this was because previous travellers had been making their lunches up from the breakfast buffet, so this was to try to counteract that)

Keukenhoff Gardens - we left the hotel at 9:30 and reached the gardens at around 11am, a lovely drive taking in all the beautiful scenery, the flowers were in full bloom and were stunningly beautiful. We had 5 hours there but didn't get to see everything. We could probably have done with another hour, but in all honesty we were pretty tired anyway by the end of the visit

Dinner that evening - turn left out of the hotel, at Carpetright cross the main road and continue straight ahead, at the end of the road turn left and there is a mall on your right. Plenty of shops and plenty of choices for somewhere to eat. Around a 10 min walk.

Amsterdam - we took the optional canal cruise, but in all honesty it probably would have been better to use the hop on / hop off cruises available as we lost around an hour while we waited for some of our party to visit the diamond factory. Use the trams to get around the city as well. If you want to visit Anne Franks house, book the ticket online before you get there as you get a fast pass into the museum. As we hadn't done that we queued for 45 mins. Well worth the visit though.

We left the hotel at 7am, stopped off at a duty free place and were home by around 9:30

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable, efficient and well organised trip. Safe for single passengers and disabled as well

Our feeder coach drivers and Cherie and Tim were great, they kept us informed were very knowledgable and helpful and a real asset to Leger.