Booked this train online direct with the Thalys site from Australia easily. Price was 79 euros each for first class and it is first class.
Free wireless on board after registration, a good meal at your seat with choice of drinks etc. The train is fast and comfortable and service from staff exceptional.
Well located hotel not far from the station. Rooms were ok with coffee and tea making facilities and reasonable wireless internet included.
Bathroom is on the small side with the actual toilet very close to walls and the entrance. Safe is too small for a 15 inch laptop.
There was a reasonable amount of noise transmission in the room when people spoke loudly in the corridor.
When all the flights for this trip were booked we originally planned to catch the Eurostar to Brussels and then Thalys to Amsterdam. At that time though the bookings were still not available for purchase and he cost of the Eurostar made us wish we had included a connecting flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam.
Unfortunately flights were booked with frequent flyer points and too late to now include.
This is a very nice apartment which beats every hotel room we have ever stayed at.
The room is large with a compact kitchen, comfortable king size bed, dining table, sofa and a desk complete with a Windows XP workstation with Internet and itunes playing through compact Bose sound system. The Bose system has a connection to accept your own mp3 player.
The bathroom includes double wash basins, a Jacuzzi spa and a rain shower head and a flexible shower head.
08:54 Vertrek Intercity Amsterdam to Brussels
This train arrived at the platform after 08:45 but still left on time.
A faster Thalys express train left Amsterdam station almost an hour earlier but that train required reservations and we had been told in Paris that there were no seats available for our $1000.00 + first class Eurail passes apart for the slower train to Brussels.
Here once again there were discrepancies with Eurail cost expectations and problems with booking compulsory reservations.
We caught the Paris Metro from La Tour Maubourg across to Gare de Lyon firstly to checkout the trip to the station we planned to leave from and to make reservations for travel using Eurail passes to Amsterdam then on to London from Amsterdam.
We arrived at Gare de Lyon and proceeded to make the compulsory Eurail reservations. We must have had a trainee or something serving us as this took more than an hour.