Day 24 – Tuesday 14 June 2016

Another delightful breakfast at 7.45am, they really do have nice fresh fruit & pastries & bread in Paris. Amazing, we have seen the sun shining this morning. Next a pleasant walk along the Seine River to Notre Dame Cathedral again, this time we are in luck, because it is so early when we get there (our motel is only 15 minutes slow walk) we walk straight in, no queue at all. Notre Dame is massive, the vaulted roof is so high & the stained glass feature windows are impressive, our photos do not do it any justice, it looks better than that. There is only one group of Chinese tourists inside, happily taking photos of everything, but the church is so big there is still plenty of room to move. We walked slowly back to our hotel enjoying our last views of Paris streets, it really is beautiful. The Seine River is still a couple of metres above its normal level & there are men repairing wharves & others hosing & cleaning the mud off the riverside esplanades.

In Paris we have seen Chinese, Japanese (others) brides & grooms having their photos taken at beautiful historical sites (usually the girls are in sneakers). Today we saw a very cold young model (in sandshoes but a man carried very high stilettoes) being photographed by the river. The photographers can’t go wrong, the background is beautiful.

As we walked out of our hotel room it started to rain – again. Our cab picked us up from the hotel at 11am & it was a slow journey to the railway station. At first our taxi driver could barely speak English. We persevered with him on the long slow drive & talked about Australia (amazingly his English became good as we went along) he told us about the lazy French who according to him have the most paid holidays in Europe & how France cannot afford to go on like that. He & his wife would love to leave France to Australia or California (for space, beach, bush & better future for his kids) , he is even considering to go back to Lebanon, but like in France he has his taxi business he wants to work for himself so he is thinking of a good business plan. The taxi driver told us there was going to be a general strike in Paris from midday & then the traffic would be absolute standstill. Lucky timing for us, we couldn’t get to the normal stop at the Paris Nord Railway Station but only had to walk about 50 metres through the stopped traffic to the entrance. Glad we got the station early, by the time we queued & got through the ticketing, French passport control then British passport control, then security, it was a bit over an hour queueing & processing. The train this time is Eurostar & we boarded around half an hour before departure, the seats again are very comfortable & we have 2 seats facing each other with a small table between. We are served lunch just like on a plane, except metal utensils, not plastic. The food was tasty, salmon for me & quiche for Tereza.

We are travelling at 295 km/hr & it is so quiet, it does not seem that we are travelling that fast. 334.7km/hr is the top speed this train has reached on the way to London. The French countryside is beautiful & green, we pass through a few patches of light rain on the way to the Channel Tunnel. The Channel Tunnel is 50.45km long & at its deepest point is 75 metres under the sea level. It took us 1 ½ hours to reach Calais from Paris & enter the Channel Tunnel – a different sensation. We were in the tunnel for around 25 minutes before emerging in England – a very comfortable & fast way to travel between France & England. It is cloudy & overcast in England, we passed over a river & the tide was out, there were a lot of boats stranded on the mud out of the water.

It was raining as we pulled into St Pancras Railway Station in London. We had an Irish taxi driver, he told us that the only place to have a good Guinness is in Ireland, everywhere else it’s a pretend. He said that it is ok for tourists to be impressed with all the history & architecture but it is all the same if you have to work & live with it

We booked into Amba Hotel Marble Arch once again & talked to our tour director Dave. He told us that 6.30 am breakfast starts, 7.15 am baggage pick up & 8.30 am start tomorrow. Here we go again.

We had some emails to catch up with & all the bills to pay (they don’t stop just because we are on holidays). We stayed in our room, even had our dinner in the room & rested after all the walking in Paris & managing to muddle our way through the railway station & getting back to England.