13 July 2019
Escaping the continent
Taking the Eurostar from Paris to London
Now I am in London, England, formerly part of Europe, currently part of limboland.
Escaping was not without incident, quite fittingly, just before entering the tunnel between France and England, drama.
The Eurostar train is dirty and dated, despite being one of the newer versions of the trains that plow the line. They are very long.
Anyway, I got up and walked to the dining car. Which is a small bar area without seating, just a couple of shelves to lean on.
As you might do, I took a photo of the bar area after ordering my terrible French style coffee. Despite not photographing the girl that was serving, she freaked out and demanded I delete the photo. There were no signs saying 'no photo' but I deleted it anyway.
She then disappeared briefly.
So... I am standing drinking my coffee reading my phone, and next thing a soldier with a machine gun arrives, demands to see my phone. I reluctantly handed it to him, then showed him how to find the photo gallery app. I asked him 'I do not understand what the problem is?'. His response, 'Shut up now or be arrested, YOUR CHOICE!'.
So there you go, that was my lasting impression of France.
Now I am in my hilariously tiny, very cheap, London hotel room. A single bed, no desk, no fridge, no air conditioning, no tv. The room has a narrow shelf to perch my laptop on while I sit on the bed, but it is quite uncomfortable, but it will do! There is however a tiny bathroom, but it has no shelf of any kind, the toilet paper is on the cistern, there is nowhere to hang a towel at all, it is currently on my bed. Finally, the window is open, and the room is full of flies!
Still in Paris at this point, and here I am in some kind of a monument park. There are many monuments, and many many more keep off the grass signs.
As this is a French park, it is mainly blinding white gravel.
There are however ducks, that seem completely oblivious to humans. The water was filthy.
This is a sculpture. It is made out of plastic or marble or something like that. Why someone spent a great deal of effort to sculpt a tree that has fallen over, I do not know.
Another photo of the Seine, the last one.
Still in the sculpture park, someone has sculpted a realistic looking bag of rubbish.
Time for one last photo of an impressive old building with gold painted highlights.
Everywhere you go, piles of scooters await.
Yep. And later in Gare Du Nord they were announcing in English that multiple pickpockets had been arrested so far today.
Here is Gare du Nord as seen from the Eurostar check in area. The check in process has actually improved since I was last here, with e-passports now accepted.
I managed to find something reasonably healthy, but extortionately expensive, but that was ok, I was spending my remaining Euros.
The departure lounge area is still very small, just before you can board the train, you cannot move. It was a lot better than last time I was here, which was 10 years ago minus one day exactly. I was last here on Bastille day, which is tomorrow, and left on the Eurostar that evening. It poured with rain all day and the entire wooden floor area here was mud. No rain in site this time.
The inside of the Eurostar is surprisingly claustrophobic. The seats are very high, the aisles are very narrow. It also seems dirty.
And now, the comedy hotel room! This is the entire room! Me and the friendly flies are sharing it.