Jour Un - Un Voyage en Train
On a usual working day I have my alarm set for the beautifully palindromic 7:07 and when it sounds press snooze with the aim of hitting 7:17 then all the subsequent palindromes until 7:57 when it is game over and I finally get up (if anyone knows of an alarm that has an optional 11 minute snooze function do let me know). Today I was too excited to sleep so got up at 6:26 with no alarm required.
After an early morning trip to Mozzas, where I was able to enjoy "Pure Shores" by All Saints as I shopped, I went to the always excellent Green's coffee shop only to find they don't open until 8:30. So I went home for a bit and returned for some eggs on toast to line my stomach ahead of what was likely to be a fairly booze centric day.
The Cambourne contingent (Keith, Brenda, Chris, Louise) and I all shared a taxi to St Neots (SNO) where we travelled to King's Cross, a short walk to St Pancreas where we met the Oxford group (Craig, Jodie) and we were on the Eurostar. Each of the team had agreed to supply a different part of breakfast, no one wanting to under-deliver we ended up with enough food not only for ourselves but for most of the carriage.
To set the tone for the weekend as soon as the train had sailed we started on the breakfast booze supplies, it was after 12:00 on French time so perfectly acceptable. Despite having quite a lot of stock we ran out before the train even reached the tunnel. Craig came to the rescue with a trip to the buffet car. On his return he reported that in all the other carriages no one was standing up and singing, it sounded terribly dull. It wasn't just us misbehaving we seemed to be in a Rugby fan carriage.
Talking of the tunnel I have a vague recollection that the two halves joined on New Years eve one year and Noel Edmonds was involved. Can any of my readers confirm this?
Readers who were in my A-level geography class may skip this paragraph, or enjoy it as a handy refresher course, I care not. In the early part of the last century Paris was a hugely popular city draining people and resources from the rest of France. The infrastructure of the city could not cope and shanty towns (bidonvilles) sprung up on the outskirts. Two huge urban planning exercises (the scheme directeur and PADOG) took place and relieved some of the strain, in particular PADOG saw the creation of new commuter towns connected to the city by the fast and popular RER service. The angular grid that the city's streets follow were designed by Baron Hausmann who's name lives on in one of the main central boulevards (Rue du Winston Churchill). Should he read this my geography master may say that the information on Paris is a little garbled and perhaps not even correct, to him I say "it was almost 30 years ago, get over it."
The queue for taxis at the Gare du Nord (Station North) was almost 2 minutes long therefore we decided to find a bar and wait for the madness to die down. You can say what you like about the French but they know how to charge for stuff. A few beers and a bottle of wine wiping out my entire 50 Euro spending money budget, although in recognition of my largess and after a heated discussion the proprietor did agree to waive the 1 Euro fee for using the toilet.
Following a short taxi ride we checked into the hotel. My room is on the 6th floor and features a lovely view of an internal courtyard. Everyone else's rooms seem to have nice views and a much bigger bed. Not a problem today as I am on my own. A problem tomorrow when Alistair and his snoring arrive. On the other hand my room is biggest.
My understanding of the plan was to dump our stuff and go straight out to the adjacent bar. I may have been a bit hasty and ended up drinking on my own for a few hours. Still it was not all wasted time, I managed to eat a pre-dinner dinner of some raw steak.
The next challenge was walking to the restaurant I had booked for the evening, it turned out to be quite easy and not too far but to listen to the moaning from some of the group (one of whom has actually climbed in the Himalayas) you would think it was in Southern Italy. For my second dinner I again had steak tartare, which annoyingly was not nearly as good as the first one despite the restaurant being much nicer. The lesson being don't have steak in what is mainly a seafood restaurant, this held true across the group with a split of those who had fish and really enjoyed it and those who had steak and were a bit pissed off.
After dinner the group split, some took a taxi the short journey home, others of us walked. Given it was still quite early I thought it wasn't quite bed time. Not everyone agreed mainly as we were all starting to feel the effects of a 12 hours on the sauce. Luckily it was easy to persuade Brenda to join me for a few nightcaps on the terrace of a nearby bar.
After an early morning trip to Mozzas, where I was able to enjoy "Pure Shores" by All Saints as I shopped, I went to the always excellent Green's coffee shop only to find they don't open until 8:30. So I went home for a bit and returned for some eggs on toast to line my stomach ahead of what was likely to be a fairly booze centric day.
The Cambourne contingent (Keith, Brenda, Chris, Louise) and I all shared a taxi to St Neots (SNO) where we travelled to King's Cross, a short walk to St Pancreas where we met the Oxford group (Craig, Jodie) and we were on the Eurostar. Each of the team had agreed to supply a different part of breakfast, no one wanting to under-deliver we ended up with enough food not only for ourselves but for most of the carriage.
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| Champagne / Brandy breakfast cocktail |
Talking of the tunnel I have a vague recollection that the two halves joined on New Years eve one year and Noel Edmonds was involved. Can any of my readers confirm this?
Readers who were in my A-level geography class may skip this paragraph, or enjoy it as a handy refresher course, I care not. In the early part of the last century Paris was a hugely popular city draining people and resources from the rest of France. The infrastructure of the city could not cope and shanty towns (bidonvilles) sprung up on the outskirts. Two huge urban planning exercises (the scheme directeur and PADOG) took place and relieved some of the strain, in particular PADOG saw the creation of new commuter towns connected to the city by the fast and popular RER service. The angular grid that the city's streets follow were designed by Baron Hausmann who's name lives on in one of the main central boulevards (Rue du Winston Churchill). Should he read this my geography master may say that the information on Paris is a little garbled and perhaps not even correct, to him I say "it was almost 30 years ago, get over it."
The queue for taxis at the Gare du Nord (Station North) was almost 2 minutes long therefore we decided to find a bar and wait for the madness to die down. You can say what you like about the French but they know how to charge for stuff. A few beers and a bottle of wine wiping out my entire 50 Euro spending money budget, although in recognition of my largess and after a heated discussion the proprietor did agree to waive the 1 Euro fee for using the toilet.
Following a short taxi ride we checked into the hotel. My room is on the 6th floor and features a lovely view of an internal courtyard. Everyone else's rooms seem to have nice views and a much bigger bed. Not a problem today as I am on my own. A problem tomorrow when Alistair and his snoring arrive. On the other hand my room is biggest.
My understanding of the plan was to dump our stuff and go straight out to the adjacent bar. I may have been a bit hasty and ended up drinking on my own for a few hours. Still it was not all wasted time, I managed to eat a pre-dinner dinner of some raw steak.
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| I even ate some of the salad |
The next challenge was walking to the restaurant I had booked for the evening, it turned out to be quite easy and not too far but to listen to the moaning from some of the group (one of whom has actually climbed in the Himalayas) you would think it was in Southern Italy. For my second dinner I again had steak tartare, which annoyingly was not nearly as good as the first one despite the restaurant being much nicer. The lesson being don't have steak in what is mainly a seafood restaurant, this held true across the group with a split of those who had fish and really enjoyed it and those who had steak and were a bit pissed off.
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| Dans le restaurant |
Tomorrow morning Alistair joins me so I spent the rest of the evening making sure I used all the towels in the room and drunk tea from each of the supplied mugs. I then took a shower and flushed the remaining toiletries down the loo. Once all that was done I fell asleep about 0.5 seconds after getting into bed (alarm was set for the middle of the night so I could switch sides and make sure I had used both areas of the bed). I am looking forward to breakfast in the morning, although I am very confused as to what I will receive if I order toast.
Tomorrow is also match day.......Alez le blancs!
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