Sometimes I really don’t know why we do it… I mean obviously to make the most of time off… but yet again… we set off super early to get to Kings Cross Station for our Eurostar trip to Paris. So,
so, so much easier than flying. For one thing, no carry on limit and you can take drinks from outside the terminal on-board and the whole check-in and immigration thing is just so much quicker. 1 min exiting the UK… walk 5 m and you officially enter France. The passport stamp is kinda cool too.. has a little train in the corner. This is one good thing about having a non-EU passport, getting all the stamps!!- Small downside was that the train (a designated train) to Eurodisney was also leaving at about the same time… so eaps and eaps of kids around… but I spose it wasn’t that bad, plus they had a little 4-piece band playing some Disney songs in the waiting area which was alright. Both trains were leaving off the same platform and I’m sure some people must have gotten on the wrong one…
Matt had arranged our trip through Andersen Tours, which made everything really easy – got our boarding pass and a map handed to us on checking in with the tour leader (who happened to be the same as the tour leader we had on our Top Deck tour through Europe in ’03... though Matt already knew this was going to be the case …) and then straight onto a Bus for a quick driving tour of the city.
The train trip itself was pretty uneventful… which is a good thing surely…
Having been to Paris once before, the driving tour we had as soon as we arrived didn’t really show us anything new, but it was a good way to get our bearings again, plus getting a recap on the history of the city is always helpful. After a couple of stops at the usual places for photos we headed to our hotel…
There was a great little Patisserie on the corner which we managed to avoid until our last day, groceries and a few little shops were all really handy. Best of all we were about 20m from the entrance to the Metro station, Marcel Sembat. It was only a couple of stops from the end of the line… but only about 15/20 mins to all the attractions. As soon as we arrived we got a bite to eat and got some beer, wine and nibblies from the supermarket (plus I threw in some bananas for good measure) We bought a 15 pack of Heineken – I thought that’d be plenty to last us the whole weekend and the train trip home… how wrong was I!. Buying the fruit there was a little different… Kinda like a deli counter, had to select the fruit I wanted then go to a counter to get it weighed and a sticker with the price put on it. Obviously I didn’t realise this until I got to the front of the queue, so had to go back – and all just for the fruit I thought I ‘should’ get!.
Back at the hotel we decided to have a couple of drinks before heading out for a Cabaret show… Matt and Jude (who was looking after our tour) managed to polish off all the beers rather quickly! For once I was the sedate one!. Given all the beers they’d had and the couple of roadies they took with them… it made for a fairly interesting metro ride out for the show! Plus when we got out of the Metro we couldn’t quite work out what direction we needed to head! Still, we made it just in time for the start of the show. To be honest I wasn’t overly impressed with the show, apart from the trapeze artist/flying acrobat… that was quite cool cause the rope and swing went right across the crowd. I’m sure Matt got more enjoyment out of the rest of the show than I did!
The Metro ride back was a lot quieter, with both Matt an Jude sleeping… luckily by this stage I kinda knew where I as going! Only thing open for dinner though was Kebabs – was a really nice kebab, but it still felt a little wrong to be eating kebab in Paris!
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