London to Paris by high speed train

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Trip Start Apr 22, 2012 Previous
Entry Trip End May 04, 2012 Next
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  London, England, United Kingdom
Monday, April 23, 2012

We land in London at about 5am. We say our goodbyes to our flight crew and head to immigration and processed rather quickly. Before we know it we are heading to catch the underground train through London to Kings Cross station. This takes roughly 50 minutes and we then walk through to the connecting Saint Pancras international station.

We go through French border control before boarding the train. Next stop Paris. The train journey is on the high speed train and we go through the "Chunnel", which was rather a non event and then sit back and watch the French countryside go by for the next 2 hours.

As we get closer to Paris, the weather looks grim. The sky is grey and it soon begins to rain. Our train arrives into Gare de Nord at 12.15pm, we hop off and make our way out of the station to the longest taxi queue ever. At least it was under cover but the rain and wind still managed to find us. Everywhere you looked, everyone looked like they were dressed for snow. We shivered and waited our turn for our taxi. I stumbled through my best French accent, attempting to to tell the driver our hotel and eventually we understood each other. Traffic was mad and cars were going in all direction but you never got the idea that road rage is a problem, they still let you in.

The taxi ride is a short one but I don't understand how much it is, as it's never what the meter says due to "luggage" which usually is 5 euro extra. He tries to draw the figure,I still have no clue, but think its 11, so give him 15 and be done with it.

The hotel is right next to the Louvre but our room isn't ready yet. We sit in a lounge bar area and wait. We think of showers and bed as we are so tired but pass some time with drinks and a club sandwich, oh and French fries of course ( except they end up being ordinary luke warm chips).
About 2 hours later our room is finally ready. It's nice and large by European standards. We shower and I crawl into bed, only to be told we have to keep going otherwise we will be awake all night grrrrr.
So we walk towards the opera house, which is beautiful, and on the way pass lots of shops. We enter one that looks like a lolly shop and we are greeted by free samples of biscuits. No purchases made however.
Drew's shin starts hurting from the rod in it from his accident a few years ago , so we decide to go back to the hotel for a quick rest. I lay on the bed and fall fast asleep, it's now 1 am and I am wide awake. I hate jet lag and international time adjustments.

Now I have a story to tell you about our little gift. One of the Qantas flight attendants and i got chatting about blogs, as she lives in London and would love to do one, so I encouraged her to start. At the end of the flight she gave me a bottle of 1999 Tattinger Comtes de Champagne to take to Paris with us. These bottles retail for over $300 in Australia, and it's what we were drinking on the flight. So I graciously accepted it and managed to find room to pack it, although it was heavy.
I kept thinking about this bottles journey, as it was originally made in Reims France, then travelled to Melbourne Australia, boarded our flight to Singapore, then to London only for us to take it back to France to be consumed in Paris. I love it. It's currently chilling in the fridge to be enjoyed tonight. Also as we were sitting waiting for our room, the bar has a framed bottle on the wall and the menu has the bottles for 220 euro.

Please note, due to traveling with my iPad, I discovered that Teavelpod website requires flash so I am having to load this via their App, which is doing very strange things, like changing photo order, doubling images up and putting them with the incorrect sub titles. I also do not have control over notifications in my contact list, so I have no idea if you are getting them but also think you may get them when I save an edit, so please accept my apologies if you are bombarded with them.
Also make sure to click on the images to enlarge them.

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Our train is the 2nd but wish it was the 3rd	A champagne bar at the station	Breakfast on the train with the best yoghurt	Ready for our train trip to Paris   Comments!
Passing time listening to music	Our Hotel du Louvre	Waiting for the room	Club sandwich   Comments!
Our suite	Through to the bedroom	Bedroom	Robes
Can't wait to try this	Our Comtes de champagne	Our first walk after arriving	Window shopping
The opera house near our hotel	We're in Paris	Yum	Paris life
The view from our room

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