Post by Theo MarkettosPost by Julian MorganThe Stena ships sell rail tickets on board, from the purser's office. This
may be the simplest way to do it. Hoek van Holland station is unstaffed
and equipped with one of the unhelpful Dutch machines that only accept
coins (not notes) or Dutch-issued cards. If you want to travel on the
high-speed line between Rotterdam and Antwerp you will need a Thalys
ticket. You could buy this via the Thalys website or when you get to
Rotterdam.
Can they sell rail tickets from stations that aren't Hoek van Holland?
You'd be wanting a ticket from Roosendaal to Antwerp. Worth a try, otherwise
I'd buy this in Rotterdam since you'll have to change there. You'll
probably have to pay a booking fee for buying from a human. Or maybe try
buying on the train. It's 27 tariff-km in Belgium, so staff might actually
want to sell you that ticket (rather than say 7km from the border to Aachen).
NS 'Any Dutch station' tickets are valid on conventional trains only, not
high speed services.
On a Dutch rail ticket machine you can buy international tickets to
Belgium and Germany. Just put in Antwerpen as your destination, select
class of travel, one way or return, date of travel and the most
important option in your case: NS travel free if you have a ticket valid
to any station in NL.
This will issue a ticket from the border to Antwerp.
On a Dutch ticket machine you can change the departure station for both
domestic and international tickets.
The machines don't issue Thalys tickets. Most machines now accept credit
cards but they come with a surcharge of EUR 0,50.
Unfortunately the webdemo on how to use a Dutch ticket machine is no
longer available on the NS website.