Adventure Is Under Construction - April 2024: Travel Day

[Gill H]

<<Pre-Travel Days


Tuesday 30 April

Our alarm woke us at 3:45 after a decent, if short, night’s sleep. Apart from a slight problem with the shower refusing to drain properly, all went well and after a much-needed coffee we left the hotel at 4:40am.

We had to walk all the way round to the main Eurostar entrance, but as this was still only really a 10 minute walk from the hotel, it wasn’t a problem.

There was a short queue for the machines which read our tickets, and then a few stressful moments getting through security. My walking stick caused problems, and eventually I had to put it behind the conveyor belt while everything else went through. I was so frazzled getting everything out of the trays afterwards that I completely forgot my stick and had to go back and pester a surly member of staff until he deigned to notice me and pass it over.

This was followed by a queue for passport checks, during which we were further hassled by miserable staff. I guess nobody likes getting up at stupid o’clock. Our previous experiences getting the Eurostar have been much more pleasant – and much less busy!

We eventually managed to find some seats. The queue for Pret a Manger was crazy, so instead Peter managed to pop into the World Duty Free shop and get us a couple of bottles of soft drink.

As soon as the platform was announced there was a mad scramble for the travelators up to the platform, but soon we were settled on the train, which left promptly at 6.01 am.
As usual, once we were on our way I headed straight to the buffet car before there was an announcement, in order to beat the queue! I was still fourth in line, and the two girls in front of me took a full ten minutes asking what was this, how much was that, and deciding what to have! I kept it simple and got two breakfast deals – latte, croissant and juice – plus two pain au raisin. These were pretty nice and made a decent breakfast for us.

After such an early start, we slept most of the way, and it didn’t seem long before our train arrived at Gare du Nord, 10 minutes early at 9:10 am.

It took a while to find a ticket machine that would accept our card – I think several of them were not working properly as we ended up in the one with the biggest queue! But soon we were heading down to catch the Line B train one stop to Chatelet les Halles. As expected, it was very crowded but fortunately it was only a couple of minutes until we could get off and catch the Line A train from just across the platform.

This was pretty quiet and we headed upstairs, just because – well, when you have the option, why woudn’t you?