Staying a couple of days in Leiden before catching the tour in Ghent. Do I need to make train reservations? Also how much time. Planning to allow about 5 hours in case of missed trains because of courses we will.
Posted by
Green Bay
23406 posts
Avoid the Eurostar and you will not need any reservations, as well as costing less. There is a connection every hour at 4 past the hour from Leiden Centraal, with train changes at Rotterdam Centraal and Antwerp Centraal, taking 2 1/2 hours.
https://www.nsinternational.com/en/
Posted by
OP
3 posts
Thank you!
Posted by
Wengen
3862 posts
if you use an EC/ECD service as the previous poster suggested you can't even reserve seats. This is all mass transit. Commuter rail. You do not need to assume you will miss trains, because you probably will not. You will quickly get the hang of how trains work and will appreciate the efficient connections, and like every other train traveller will get impatient if you have more than a few minutes between trains...
Going to Gent you could get of in Gent Dampoort, which is the first station when coming from that direction, and which is closer to the city centre. But look up where your hotel is in Ghent first.
Posted by
London, England
374 posts
You do not need to make reservations but you do need to buy a ticket on the day - there is contactless payment in the Netherlands but not for cross-border journeys into Belgium.