We'll admit it: we were surprised. With Eurostar tickets for direct trains from London to Amsterdam finally on sale, we were skeptical that we'd find one of those much-vaunted £35 singles.
Yet lo and behold, the very day after the service opens (4 April), we found one — in fact four — £35 tickets. Score! And a quick scroll through future months shows the timetable occasionally studded with these thrifty golden gems, among other, less attractive fares to Amsterdam. (Weirdly, some journeys that involve a change, and take over an hour longer, cost considerably more.)
So yes, Eurostar does offer singles as cheap as £35. And a simple bit of maths (it only took us, like, three minutes) tells you that this being the case, you should be able to find a return ticket for as little as £70.
Not so.
As yet, you can't book a direct train from Amsterdam to London. And the extra add-on fee for the Thalys train between Amsterdam and Brussels means that there is no such thing as a £35 single from Amsterdam to London.
In fact, the cheapest Amsterdam-London fare is currently £43 — making the cheapest return ticket £78. Even then, you may end up doing some serious compromising on dates to find a return at that price.
Still. London to Amsterdam direct — woo!
