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Published: August 25th 2013
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St. Pancras International Train Station in London
We're here to catch our Eurostar train through the chunnel to Paris. We left our home in Hackney, London, saying goodbye to the neighbourhood and to Ed and Miss Kika the cats. Dragged our suitcases a few blocks to the train station. Then a short train ride and a couple of tube rides and we reached St. Pancras International Train Station to catch a Eurostar train to go through the "chunnel" to Paris. I purchased the reserved seat tickets for $106 per person over the internet a few months ago and printed them at home.
The Channel Tunnel, also referred to as the Chunnel, is a 50.5-kilometre undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent, in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais, near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is 75 m deep. At 37.9 kilometres, the Channel Tunnel possesses the longest undersea portion of any tunnel in the world. Our Eurostar train reached a top speed of close to 300 km/hr.
We reached the chunnel after about 30 minutes, the ride under the water was only about 20 minutes, and the total trip was only about 2.5 hours.
When we arrived in Paris we exited the train station to
get into the long taxi line but the Mercedes limo SUV drivers approached us and we were able to barter them down from 100 Euros to 70 Euros to take all four of us and the luggage. This was still probably double what a taxi would have cost but we got to leave immediately, travel in comfort and he gave us a nice scenic tour of some of the Paris highlights on the way to our apartment.
We met the son of our home exchange partner at the suite and then we were totally blown away by the incredible view of the Eiffel Tower from the windows and the roof-top terrace of this 3-bedroom, 9th floor penthouse suite just across the river and a few blocks from the tower. The apartment is large and beautiful with a huge south-facing terrace plus steps to the roof-top terrace exclusive to this apartment.
We managed to pull our eyes away from the view and headed out to explore the immediate neighbourhood a little, shop for some supplies (wine) and stopped for dinner at an Indian restaurant just around the corner (Le Agra, 7 Rue Lekain) which we would highly recommend for
good food and service and very reasonable prices.
We walked back to the apartment after and stared at the Eiffel tower for hours, from the office window, from the bathroom, from the rooftop terrace. I am sitting at the office desk writing this now, with a huge picture window in front of me and the Eiffel Tower fills my view. I watched it in fog, in daylight, at night, and doing a laser light show (on the hour, every hour). I probably shot 50 photos and a few videos already and I will probably do that every day for three weeks! It is so beautiful and looks different every few minutes. But I will try hard to not totally fill this blog with photos of the Eiffel Tower!
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