For Eurostar Deals to Amsterdam up until now, the advice has been to take the Eurostar train from St. Pancras International in London to Brussels Midi Station and then catch a connecting train to Amsterdam. But starting this winter, there are changes which will make the through route a lot more conveient. In December, a new high-speed rail connection between Brussels and Amsterdam opens, cutting the journey from London to Amsterdam by a whole hour, making short city breaks to Amsterdam by train much more practical.

More about Fyra, the Brussels to Amsterdam High Speed Train

New Fyra train for Eurostar deals to Amsterdam

Fyra is the name of the new high-speed train which will start duties between Brussels and Amsterdam in the autumn of 2010, and means `four’ in Swedish. The name is derived from the fact that it will link up the four major cities in Belgium and the Netherlands, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. How this will affect the kind of Eurostar deals available from London, I’m not exactly sure yet – the best thing to do probably will be to have a good look around on the Eurostar Planet booking website for now.

Fyra is a project of cooperation between the national rail network NMBS and Hispeed, a consortium of the Dutch railways NS and the Dutch airline company KLM. By 2010 the high-speed train will travel between Brussels and Amsterdam sixteen times a day using 19 trains, three of which will belong to NMBS and sixteen to Hispeed. The rail infrastructure of the high-speed train has been finalised in Belgium and in the Netherlands, but Fyra’s safety system must still be checked by the European ERMTS. Over the next few weeks test drives will be conducted across the entire route. If the tests prove successful, the Italian company AnsaldoBreda can start the production of the trains. The Fyra will not be the only high-speed train on the route, with the Thalys travelling from Paris six times a day from December to Amsterdam. The Fyra will only take to the tracks a year later, when competition for Eurostar deals through the channel tunnel will become very interesting indeed.

Photo credit Arnold de Vries

Technorati Tags: Amsterdam, antwerp, Belgium, brussels, city breaks, dutch railways, europe, eurostar deals, eurostar train, high speed train, high-speed, rotterdam, st pancras international, thalys, the Netherlands

Now in a perfect world the eurostar website would be very easy to find your way around to get the best dates times and hotels available, given the specific needs of any one particular trip. But I have to admit it does take a little getting used to so it maight help if you allow a little bit of time to make your choices. The best eurostar deals are always well in advance, and about three months is generally the rule for new seat becoming available to book so try to work around that kind of timeframe to get the best deals. Another tip I would pass on is to spend a little bit of time with Google maps to check out the actual locations of the hotels on offer. By doing that you will be able to distinguish between the best hotel and eurostar deals as opposed to those where you might end up a little off the beaten track, which might be fine for a country retreat holiday but not really for a short city break in Paris.

Technorati Tags: city breaks, EUROSTAR, hotel, package, paris