Eurostar Is Selling A £30 Ticket To Amsterdam – But Is It Too Good To Be True?

We looked at the small print.
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Hop on the train at London St Pancras and get off in Amsterdam for a one-day city break all for just £30.

Eurostar is selling tickets for a direct London to Amsterdam train journey for a limited time; tickets must be booked on 12, 13, and 14 February for travel between 25 February and 28 March with two ticket types to pick from – a morning train or afternoon train. 

This is a pretty incredible deal, but is it too good to be true? We took a closer look at the small print.

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Evening Standard

As it turns out, the deal doesn’t apply to the return journey.

For your journey back to London, there are also no direct trains to catch, because of complications with passport checks in Amsterdam. As a result you will have to get the train back to London via Brussels, (the average cost of return journey starts from £80 btw).

So how much will it cost you all together? If you get the four hour train ride from London to Amsterdam on 26 Feb, you pay the £30, but to return on Thursday 28 it will currently set you back £91.50. And that’s the lowest fare.  

Also, as part of the terms and conditions, your ticket must be booked at least seven days before departure and the deal doesn’t stretch to the weekends due to limited availability and at peak times (the afternoons and evenings over the weekend), i.e. when we all want to go away.

For a one-way fare over the weekend, you can expect to fork out anything from £39 to £65 while the deal is ongoing.

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Reuters

Tickets with the deal can only be booked through snap.eurostar.com, Eurostar’s online portal, which FYI is one to keep an eye on for weekly updates on travel deals. The only catch is you need a Facebook or Twitter account to access it. 

But how does it compare to the cost of flying there? Easyjet offers direct flights in both directions of travel, take note Eurostar, from as little as £22 each way on 26 February if you fly from London Gatwick, while British Airways also had one-way trips from £28 on the same date.

Excuse us, just booking a last minute holiday. We’ll be flying there though.

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