The Anonymous Widower

Booking A Train Ticket To The Hague From London

The last time, I went to The Hague, I just went to the Eurostar site and booked one ticket to Any Dutch Station.

But now, this simple system has been discontinued at the behest of the Dutch government.  For what reason, I will not speculate although, I have had various opinions given to me by my Dutch friends. I’ll give my view after I return from The Netherlands.

So this time, I’ve booked a single ticket to Brussels on Eurostar.

The train I shall be riding on Tuesday, will get me to Brussels just after mid-day. I shall be trying to buy a ticket to The Hague on the convenient 13:18 departure between the two capitals, when I arrive in Brussels.

It’s a real downgrade from the previous service, in that I shall have to change trains at Rotterdam as well. The direct train has been discontinued. I’ve taken that train several times and the standard is similar to what I you get on the fast London to Ipswich and Norwich trains.

So I’ll be getting a quicker high-speed train, but I’d prefer a direct train. In the UK, when I go say from London to Liverpool, I always book direct trains for convenience. I also don’t want to have to wait on a cold platform for a train to arrive. The connection in Rotterdam might be easy, but I’ve only been to the station there, some years ago and can’t remember it.

I thought for safety, I would book a later train in case, I couldn’t fathom out how to buy the ticket in Brussels.

So I went to the SNCB web site to book one. Incidentally, Eurostar allows you to enter Rotterdam into their site, but doesn’t allow you to book tickets, just telling you that there are no tickets available. To find where to book, I looked up how on Seat 61, which gave me the address of the SNCB web site to book the ticket from Brussels to The Hague.

Just imagine someone having to book a ticket urgently, for either business or family reasons and wanting to get to say Utrecht. They would give up or just book to Brussels knowing or even just thinking that they could get a train from there.

So I looked up the SNCB web site and found these trains from Brussels to Den Haag.

13:18 – Dutch high speed train – 15:02 – £21.42

13:52 – Thalys – 15:26 – £38.47

13:56 – Local Train – 2 changes – 16:41 – £24.35

15:18 – Dutch high speed train – 17:02 – £21.42

So by travelling on the slow Dutch train, you have two changes and pay more.

In the end I bought a ticket on the 13:56.

But I had to pay an extra booking fee, just like you don’t do on any British train booked on the train company’s web site. Although I had to pay a similar amount on Eurostar.

The ticket is two sheets of A4 paper, one for each leg of the journey.  We may go on about the old British Rail-era orange tickets, but they fit nicely in a wallet.

What do you do incidentally, if you’re booking these tickets on a laptop on a train coming to London to get the Eurostar? Or you’re doing it late at night, and the printer runs out of paper?

I don’t think the SNCB web site gave you an alternative.

January 6, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Belgium, Credit Cards, Eurostar, The Netherlands, Ticketing, Trains