On the Eurostar

Woke up early this morning to go to Paris; this is the first time I used rail for long distance travel. First impressions were: convenient, less stressful, and quick. Our current home is only two tube stops away from St Pancras International which is where the international trains depart from. Kings Cross train station (beside St Pancras) is where the local trains depart from. We bought e-tickets so when we got there; we simply went on vending machines to get our boarding tickets. Once we have our boarding tickets, we queued up to check in through immigration. All this took less than 30 minutes. We waited a while for platform 9 (NOT 9 ¾) to open then boarded the train.

The trip to Paris took just under 3 hours including a quick stopover at Ashton to pick up more passengers.

As the train moved really fast and half the time we were in tunnels, there wasn’t much to see. The French countryside we did see weren’t much different from the English countryside.

The Eurostar is more comfortable than a plane. The seats are wider, there’s more leg room and it is quieter than a plane. There was this slightly irritating pressure build up every time you go through a tunnel that affects you ears. But a simple equalising of the ears fixes the problem.

Considering the convenience, absence of airport check-in hassles, and potentially cheaper fares, I’m looking forward to more train travelling to, from and around Europe in the near future.

Anyway just to give you an idea how fast the Eurostar goes (Wikipedia says around 300km/h)...the photos below shows the front of the train. Those dots are bug splatters and you imagine how hard it will be to clean them out. The next train shows a red patch. That WAS a bird. You can see the feathers stuck to the paint just under the grill.