The day we departed London began with an early 5am start. Unfortunately too early for the hotel Continental breakfast, but we managed.
Due to the freakish November weather, Dad arranged a tentitave booking for us at the hotel we had been staying at, just in case our train to France got cancelled.
We lugged our massive suitcases (in the snow!) across the road to St Pancras station and located the entrance for the Eurostar at 6am. Luckily, our 6:55am train was not cancelled. Phew! What a relief. The train leaving at 7:55am had been cancelled, so we were super super happy, but this meant that the Eurostar now ran on a 1st in 1st serve policy. Which basically meant that if people with the later trains that were cancelled checked in before us, too bad, they'd get a place on our train. We all thought it was a pretty stupid system, but we were happy because we got in in plenty of time, and therefore still had a spot on our train.
For those of you who don't know what the Eurostar is, it's basically a train that goes from London to Paris with a few stops in between. It goes under water for about 20 minutes, but other than that it's all on land. Because you're travelling to a different country you have to go through customs just like you would on an International flight, but fortunately for us, it didn't take too long at all. We sat and waited for a little while, got a hot chocolate each and just waited for our boarding time.
It was rather crowded, so when it was time to board the train, our huge bags weren't at all helpful. Lugging them onto the train was pretty difficult and putting them into the baggage carriers was hard because of their size. It didn't help that these baggage areas were right near the doors, so a whole heap of people were held up for a while and weren't too happy, but what can you do? We couldn't leave our bags behind.
The train ride was very smooth and we had a rather white view as there was heavy snow in England. I slept for most of it, but apparently the 20 minutes underwater wasn't too bad, but Mum freaked out a little haha. The journey took 3 hours instead of the usual 2, due to the weather but we weren't complaining, we were just happy it wasn't cancelled.
Once we got off in Paris, we automatically noticed that the Gare du Nord station was a lot more open then King's Cross and St. Pancras in London. So we were very cold!
It was about 11:30am by the time we were off the train. We had arranged for a transfer to pick us up and take us to our apartment when another Eurostar arrived at 4pm as our check in time wasn't until 4pm. We had some time to spare so Mum had originally planned for us to leave our baggage in the lockers at the station and go and see the eifell tower. But due to our train delay, the dismal weather and the cost of the baggage lockers, we decided it wasn't worth it. Instead we lugged our baggage across the road to Maccas, got some brunch and decided that we'd just have to wait until our transfer came.
It was a long wait and as I mentioned before it was a very open station, which meant it was freezing. They even had outdoor heaters lined up along the station but it was very busy, which meant heater access was limited. This meant they we had to FREEZE for hours. This was the coldest we had been so far, we even got desperate enough to pretend to browse for books in a french news agent just because of the warmth. There were no indoor places to eat or anything. It was terrible. I distracted myself with my book, but Mum, Dad and Sam were just sitting there feeling cold and thinking about being cold. Meanwhile, we had a whole heap of stubbornbeggars constantly approaching us speaking gibberish or holding up signs. Not a nice experience.
Just like in London, we had already paid for the transfer so we didn't want to pay for a car to take us anywhere. And even if we did, we had no where to go. We couldn't take our bags into cafes or shops. We weres stuck waiting freezing in the station for hours and hours and hours and hours :(
It got to about 3pm when realised that none of us could feel our fingers or toes and the train that our transfer was booked with got delayed 50 minutes. Greeeeat. Another 50 minutes to wait.... When 4:50pm finally rolled around we were standing right where the passengers of the train were entering the main station. We waited and waited and checked every sign. But just like in London, no transfer turned up. By 5:30 we were packing our bags into the back of a massive taxi all feeling like we had hypethermia.
The car cost 80 euros. Great. Feeling very frustrated, annoyed, cold and hungry we were highly relieved to arrive at our warm apartment in Marais. It was lovely. The apartment was so spacious. Two large bedrooms, a bathroom, a toilet, a kitchen/laundry, a lounge/dining area and free wifi! Ahhhh so good! After 10 days of cramped hotel rooms, this was luxury. After our horrible day we had no desire to go out for dinner, so instead Mum and Dad went out, got some Pizza and groceries while Sam and I stayed at home.
They had been out for 45 minutes when I started to get worried, they still weren't back. I decided to give it another 10 minutes before I went into full freak out mode. 5 minutes later Mum and Dad arrived at the apartment. Phew! I have no idea what I would have done if they suddenly went M.I.A. on Sam and I. Turns out that they had been standing outside the appartment for about 15 minutes entering in the door code, but it wasn't working. They even tried to get some French girl who lived in the same section of appartments to help them, but due to the language barrier nothing was achieved. That was until they realised that they were standing at door number 6... we were staying at door number 4. Niiice one Mum and Dad.
Oh well. They brought back Pizza from a local store which was really yummy, but different from home (it had corn on it haha), as well as some bread that we could toast for breakfast the next morning and a few other things. It was really nice to have a bit of a homely feeling happening in the appartment, especially after the day we had.
Not the best start to Paris, but we were determined not to let that experience ruin our view of France. We had two days of sightseeing in Paris to change our minds.
No comments:
Post a Comment