"I'm in ur country, eating ur cheese!"A funny thing happened on the way to Paris. Actually, a few funny things happened. 1.) We missed our train. The tube was hitting a few delays (which, apparently is normal). That and we figured we could make a train that departed at 11:05 if we show up at St. Pancras International at 11:03. Didn't happen. Expecting to get absolutely destroyed at the ticket counter when asking for an exchange (figuring this was going to set me back ~£300.00 [$600] in the "we don't exchange" department), the very nice man at the Eurostar took pity on us and swapped us straight up for the 12:30 train. Thank you very much, Eurostar dude.
The second funny thing is that not only did we miss our first train, the train we did make missed an entire stop of people further on down the line. We stopped in the middle of the English countryside to have an announcement go over that "we forgot to pick up people" and were going to have to turn around. About 20 minutes later, the announcement came over the intercom that we were going to move on without picking up the stranded passengers and continuing on to Gare du Nord. There never is a formal announcement that you are about to go under the English Channel, just prolonged darkness. We then emerged to the French countryside and a thin fog all the way to Paris. (Apparently you can't have a train station in Europe unless you have a crap-ton of graffiti-laced buildings leading up to your stop.)
We are now comfortably settled into our Hotel Muguet in Paris. Even though I'm back in a country where I don't speak the native language, my sister should be having us covered in both the money and the translation department. Also Hotel has a little bit more reliable wireless interwebs and therefore I should have picutres from the days events up in the evening tomorrow.
2 comments:
I find it mildly disconcerting that two highly educated young people could not figure out that if you are not heading for the train by 8:00 a.m. you will not be on the train at 11:05 a.m. Luck was with you, and probably the sad, fooling, American schoolchildren faces, thus saving your sponsors from a horrendous bill but not from the heart attack that incurred when you called at 5:10 A.M. C.S.T. to inform them you had, in fact, missed the train.
But all safe in Paris, great Marginot Line pic, by the by, and what inquiring minds want to know is how fast did the train go?
Love Moms
I would say the train went about 90-100 mph. Fast enough to get from London to Paris is just under 3 hours.
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