After the usual last minute work panic, we finally left home just before noon on Sunday 19 August. We had hoped to complete the whole journey on public transport, but due to our lovely English summer weather we decided to take a lift to the station!
Our first train journey went well and we arrived at Finsbury Park on time; after struggling across London with our heavy bags we reached Waterloo with nearly 90 minutes to spare before our train to Paris. Oh well, better early than late! We bought some currency at Waterloo and learned an important lesson – always get the currency beforehand as the rates at Waterloo are terrible! We also had to fight to get reasonably sized notes – they tried to persuade us to take a €200 note!
Claire turned up well on time as well so we checked into Eurostar well before the 30 minute deadline – but we didn’t have too long to wait before we could board the train. We were a little disappointed by the Eurostar train – very little legroom and it seemed very dated – but we arrived in Paris on time and managed to find our way across Paris (metro M4 to Chatelet, then M14 to Bercy) – the only slight hassle being that the turnstiles were a little small for our bag!
We had planned on getting something to eat at Bercy as we had an hour or so to wait there. This was our first mistake – Bercy is a tiny station, particularly for an international terminal! There are almost as many facilities at Sandy station!
Our train soon pulled into the station and we located carriage 89 (strange numbering system – the train definitely didn’t have 89 carriages!) and our 6-berth couchette. We struggled a little to get all our luggage into the compartment, but had just managed to do so when another passenger turned up – we had hoped for a compartment to ourselves. Oh well, at least it lived up to the Hogswart Express image Elaine and Claire had expected! Unfortunately another 2 passengers then turned up, both with lots of luggage so we had a somewhat cramped journey to Milan. The other passengers did however prove to have one useful function – they managed to convert the seats into beds! We had been wondering how to do that…
We finally went to bed about 10pm – our only evening meal having been a box of Pringles and a few too many fruit pastilles and liquorice allsorts. Unfortunately, our co-passengers (who appear never to have met before!) seemed to get on far too well and decided to keep talking for what seemed like seemed like hours!
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