London to Rotterdam on Eurostar
Our journey on Eurostar was to begin early on Monday morning at Kings Cross St Pancras. As we made our way to Rotterdam, it was booked only a few weeks before and luckily due to Simons main job at TFL he was able to get discounted seats for premium economy at £60 each way. Our plan was to take the Eurostar to Rotterdam, travel round the Netherlands for a few days visiting Theme Parks & Christmas Markets then get the Eurostar back from Brussels.
The best thing about the planning for a Europe trip using the Eurostar is you don’t need to worry about baggage, no limits, no plastic bags for toiletries, just on the train and off you go.
Eurostar Departures Kings Cross St Pancras
Arriving in the early morning at Kings Cross St Pancras two hours before our train departure we were warmly welcomed and guided into the queue for security, it was a very simple process of scanning our ticket at an automatic check in gate then putting our bags through an Xray machine similar to an airport, somehow thought it all just felt a lot less stressful and there weren’t any worries of having to explain how a bottle of Evian had made it into your bag.
The next step is immigration or as we call it Brexit bonkerness, before all of this you could quite easily leave the UK and travel in Europe. Now you have to ensure you’ve got at least 3 months on your passport before your return date and have return plans available to show if requested to show you’re not going to abscond to Europe and not return. In all fairness if you have your passport ready this is pretty smooth, and you do get a free stamp!
Once in the departures lounge of Eurostar St Pancras you have plenty of time to walk about and visit the few coffee shops they have, we realised that we might have arrived a bit to early as it was quite busy and there wasn’t much else to see or do there. With that in mind we’d recommend getting there about an hour before your departure.
Premium economy doesn’t get you into the business class lounge but there is one there that looks very similar to an airline business class lounge.
Around 20 minutes before departure to gates open up for the travelators up to the platform, just like at the airport everybody rushes to be the first on board. It’s all very well organised up on the Platform for Eurostar with guards at each carriage ready to welcome you on board or guide you to your correct carriage. Everyone has allocated seating much like a plane but with Premium Economy before you depart you can go on the app and choose your preferred seats.
Eurostar Premium Economy Review
We had two single seats facing each other with a table in between by the window, a perfect little sport to watch the world from! After getting comfortable the guard for the coach welcomed us onboard again and explained once we had departed, they would be serving a cold meal and drinks. Our Eurostar pulled out of St Pancras and within a few minutes the speed was building up towards the 300kmh.
The service on board was what we’d call good but not mind blowing, which is fine. Premium economy only gets you a chilled meal meaning they can streamline the process instead of serving a hot meal. In all fairness it was quite tasty and would have been even better if it was hot. You also had a selection of whatever you wanted to drink, beer, wine, tea, coffee etc. Our carriage was pretty empty, so the staff were very attentive if we needed their help.
The journey itself was extremely smooth and very comfortable, Simon quite quickly fell asleep again then we whooshed into the Channel Tunnel making our way across the English Channel into France. Onboard the seats were nice and wide with a reclining feature and all seats in Premium Economy had UK and European plug connections as well as USB sockets. The onboard Wi-Fi was pretty good too and meant you could keep in contact even when in the tunnel.
Our journey took about 3 hours which considering at an airport we would have had to arrive even earlier, have a lot of hanging about and the cost of a taxi or parking at the airport we think this was a great stress-free option. When the train arrived in Rotterdam as we had already done the immigration we could just walk straight out of the station. We used the station lockers at Rotterdam which only cost a few euros and that gave us the freedom to explore the city without baggage.
