We last morning. We were sad to leave, but we were also looking forward to going on a diet!

Despite our disappointment at leaving the ship, we were looking forward to our trip home by train.

We caught the Thalys service from Amsterdam to Brussels. We were travelling first class, but we didn't really feel it. The train was very crowded, there were no free refreshments and finding a place to put luggage felt more like a scrum! Nevertheless, the train arrived on-time.

By contrast, the Eurostar service from Brussels to London was far superior. We were given a very good meal and had plenty of space to move around, despite the train also being quite full. The only negative point was that we all had to get off the train at Ashford and take a different train which had been travelling to Paris, but which had developed a fault and couldn't enter the channel tunnel. This delayed our journey by thirty minutes, but at least it had allowed the people travelling to Paris to complete their journeys... just as others had helped us by swapping ships with us at Nuremberg a week before!