Around the World: Part Six

In which we crossed the English Channel

We got a wake up call at 4am. I got ready and took my luggage to the reception and checked out. We were told to assembly here at 5am. We got a packed breakfast: sandwich, juice, pastry, nutrition bar and apple. Our coach captain was Raja and he had tough time loading the luggage into the bus. We left the hotel around 05:30am for the St. Pancras’ Station, Central London (the very same station of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). We reached the station and Akhilesh gave us the tickets of Eurostar.

St. Pancras station

Eurostar 

It is a high speed train connecting the Great Britain to the Continental Europe. The speedy train crosses the English Channel through the Channel Tunnel in just 35 minutes. The maximum speed goes up to 298 km/h. The experience in eurostar is far better that on the flights.

We checked in at the departure gate; scanned the bar-code on our ticket. Then the luggage was scanned and we have to pass through a metal detector. We queued up next for the UK VISA check. The passport was scanned. Just a few steps ahead, the Schengen VISA was checked and the passport was stamped. So now we were good to go to the French city. The boarding announcement was already done for our train. So we went up to the platform through the travelator.  The travelator is a sloping version of the escalators. It was a bit difficult to stand on it with the luggage. At the upper end, we had to pull out the bags. The Eurostar 4019 had 15 coaches with the 8^th coach in front of the travelator. My seat was in the 5^th coach. There was not much time to watch the complete station and click photos. I did manage to click one.

There are two stairs while aboarding the door, then there is a toilet, then there are luggage racks on either sides of the coach. We kept our check in bags on the luggage racks and the handbags went into the carriage over the seats. The train departed from the St. Pancras station. The screens displayed the current speed of the train and how much distance has it covered and how much is yet to cover. After a few minutes, the Eurostar halted at the Ebbsfleet station. Then it crossed through the English Channel. Now we were on the French land. Here I had some conversations with Shilpa Nadkarni, Shilpa Vichare, Lata Thakur and Jijabai Deore. Finally we reached the Paris Garu de Nord station.

We alighted along with the luggage and had to drive it through the platform till the last coach. We reached Paris at around 11:30am and were waiting for our bus till 1pm. Finally the bus was parked. Again we had to pull the luggage out from the station to the bus. The coach captain for today was Nicola. Then we experienced the pathetic traffic of Paris city. I dozed off for most of the time and woke up when this stomach started craving for food. An add-on to the traffic was a protest and rally going on in the city, so the road routes were diverted. We finally left the bus, started walking on the street towards our lunch restaurant Welcome India, boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris. Like the oasis in the desert, the delicious food did bring a smile on our faces after the tiring journey and its surprises. But this was not yet over.

Done with the lunch; we were waiting for the bus to pick us from the restaurant and head towards the Eiffel Tower. But as I mentioned before the routes were diverted. We waited for quite some time. Multiple options were suggested to reach the Eiffel Tower: bus or metro. I was ready to go there even walking! I have been seeing the miniature tower on my friend’s desk in office and have imagined of how wonderful the picture would be on reaching its top. A journey is not a journey if it does not have a few road blocks.

Read next: Around the World: Part Seven