Hi... I'm going to England in early October (yay!) and I would like to take a day or to off and go to Amsterdam. I am not into the whole cannabis/red light district thing, I'd simply like to see a little bit of the city and visit a couple of museums, and basically to say I've been there.. I could stay the day, over-night, or even a couple of nights.

I will be in London for a spell as well as visiting friends in Great Yarmouth (which is nearer Amsterdam than it is to London) I would like your advice on just how to get there.

Would you consider one of the little tour groups like Evan Evans that leave from London, a coach or a train, or a ferry (is there one) from Yarmouth?

I'm not too interested in flying because I don't want to put up with the whole airline-be-there-an-hour-before-departure, taxi to the airport, hurry up and wait, etc. but if you tell me otherwise that isn't out of the question either. Thanks.

fly.
The flight is short and you can probably book a fairly inexpensive flight. The coach/ferry route would take much longer!

First of all, you are not required to explain why you are going to A-Dam or what you are, or are not planning to do there.

For budget airlines try going to www.whichbudget.com

www.easyjet.com

Some of their Amsterdam flights leave from Gatwick while others from Luton. While getting to Luton from London can be a pain, Gatwick is relatively painless.

Train and ferry is long long long.

Yarmouth might be nearer to Amsterdam than to London (though not in my atlas it isn't, and it sounds like the kind of spurious "fact" lazy local journalists keep on churning out without ever checking.) But the only surface transport between them involves going to Harwich (which is halfway back to London), getting a very long ferry (8 hrs or so: boats just don't go very fast) - and then getting only to Hook of Holland, which means another train to Amsterdam.

The quickest way from Yarmouth is to fly from Norwich to Amsterdam: KLM do five return flights a day. The cheapest is likely to be EasyJet from Stansted, which is on the normal road route from Yarmouth to London, and has public transport links with most of East Anglia.

The only train route involves a reasonably fast train to Brussels from London (for which you have to check in and hang about, just like a plane), then a change, the whole station-to-station journey taking at least six hours if the connections are short.

There are however frequent flights from all the other four London area international airports, as well as Stansted. EasyJet isn't necessarily the cheapest: BA and KLM bring their prices down to compete. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton all have trains every 15 minutes from major London stations (as well as frequent buses if you're mean, masochistic or luggage-bound), and it's a fantasy to believe any of them is especially easy or difficult to get to. Some are trickier to get to from some parts of London - but which, depends on where you're starting from.

Go to the timetables at www.nonrev.net (setting the London code as LON to see all airports), select the journey that suits, then click on the airline to check the prices.

BMI from LHR to AMS is often very cheap: http://www.flybmi.com

For cheap flights I'd definitely check out Ryan Air.

You don't need a tour. It's one of the top short break destinations for Brits, whether self-organised or through one of the many packages on offer. I'm going myself next weekend (self-organised).

Harwich to Amsterdam is a good 10+ hours. Even allowing for check-in times, total travel time by air is barely 4-5 hours. The question is the amount of time it takes to get to the departure point.

Some other online resources:
www.skyscanner.net.
www.channels.nl
www.visitamsterdam.nl

twoflower:

Why check Ryanair?

The nearest Ryanair airport to Amsterdam is probably Eindhoven. Which is about as far away as Yarmouth.