What a great night I had yesterday. After having dinner with a friend and his girldfriend in a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in Paris called Le Potagere du Marais, I was walking back to my friend’s flat alone, for he had left to walk her girlfriend home. Since it was too early for me to go home (11.45 pm), I decided to wander around my favourite Parisian neighbourhood, Le Marais.
I made it. On Saturday, after missing my early morning London-Paris Eurostar train, I got to Gare du Nord, Paris, at 18.02 after a fantastic eight hour trip from London to Paris passing by Dover and Calais. At the end, it was easier than I thought, and much cheaper than any of the other options, i.e. Eurostar or bus. I spent £27.50 + €41.50, that is a total of €75, when the bus was €124 and the Eurostar €196!
It was as interesting and entertaining as I foresaw when I wrote my previous post on the train from Charing Cross (London) to Dover. This first leg of the journey started with my first encounter of the day while I was waiting for the 10 am train to Dover before the gates to the platforms. To kill time, I asked to a member of the staff (a Revenue Protection Inspector) in which platform he thought it was going be. This question gave place to a nice little chat in which this guy, who had the job of checking the tickets and fine people if necessary, confessed that he doesn’t like to fine but to help people while on duty. He just had helped a couple who bought a 1st class ticket to get £20 each back, for on the train there is no first class, so they needed to downgrade their tickets. Then I told him about my trip to Paris, and he told me that he was leaving for Las Vegas with his family in the afternoon. His dream had always been to visit the Grand Canyon and fly over it on helicopter. Now he was going to realise this dream he had had since he saw the Grand Canyon in a movie (unfortunately I don’t remember the title).
Being Saturday in the morning, the train was nearly empty. I had a 4-seat place for myself, so I turned on my recently-purchased iPad, and while surfing the Internet, listening to music and eating a cheese sandwich with a mango smoothie, I wrote the post on how far Paris was.
I lost the train. This morning, for unfortunate circumstances I lost the 6.22 am Eurostar from London to Paris. A friend of mine was waiting for me on the train with a full breakfast (croissants, pain chocolate, fruit, juices…). And I missed it!
This trip has been planned for more than 10 years. All comes back to a night in Paris in 1999. Walking back home with a friend near La Bastille, we started to talk about the girl he was going out with. In the conversation I told him that my intuition told me that he was not going to be with her in six months time.
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