The Eurostar
I checked out the Eurostar
area of the Waterloo station on one of my many Tube travels around London. The Eurostar station was new, elegant
and clean. I was not able to see
all of this until my actual departure. I
was, however, able to figure out where I needed to be to catch my Eurostar
I was about to embark on the most acclaimed train in the world..
To get to Paris, I will travel First-Class on the Eurostar. Since I am already a rail-fan (train lover), the only way to get to Paris was via high-speed train. Actually, the 2.5-hour trip was faster and a bit more expensive than by air.
London Riverfront and Waterloo Eurostar Station
The above picture is a composite of over 30 images from a satellite pasted together to form the London waterfront. Also in the picture, made in the Fall of 1999, is the still-horizontal London Eye. The Waterloo train station is also shown as is the newly constructed addition (white area) to cover the nearly one mile long Eurostar.
When leaving London, I
again took a London Black to Waterloo station.
After all, I was traveling first-class so why not go all the way, right? First-class on the Eurostar is really
First-Class. The seating is like
your most comfortable recliner at home. Plus,
a menu for lunch that was really First-Class.
And, for just a little bit more, they would have a Paris taxi waiting to
take me to the hotel. But, I
elected to save that expense for other entertainment.
The trip was slightly
tainted due to the fact that the train arrived in London almost 40 minutes late. No reason was given. Instead of leaving around 10:15am, we
left at 11:30am. I was on no real
timetable, so the delay gave me extra time to check out the Eurostar station and
do one of my favorite pastimes, people watching.
Some were really upset with the delay.
Others, like myself, paid little attention.
The Eurostar is very quiet
and extremely smooth. The only
drawback was a group of four English businessmen sitting across from me. The longer we traveled, the louder they
got playing cards and being served free drinks.
Walking around the train, I found an empty First-Class car just ahead of
the one I was in. So, I moved there. While
there, a steward came by, he ask me
if I was all right. I said,
"Yes", it was just that the guys next to me were a bit loud, so I
moved. He said that I was fine. I spent most of the trip, after the
Chunnel, enjoying the quiet, smooth ride through the French countryside.
The trip from Waterloo to the Chunnel entrance was very typical. Not much speed as most of the trip was on existing city/urban rail lines in and around London. However, once we reached the Chunnel, our speed increased to around 125mph for the 30-minute trip to France, 150' under the English Channel.
Eurostar speeds you through the Channel Tunnel, one of Europe's biggest infrastructure projects to date.
The $15 billion Channel Tunnel makes the old dream of a ground link between Great Britain and continental Europe a reality for the first time since the Ice Ages.
The tunnel consists of 3 interconnected tubes:
one rail track each way plus one service tunnel.
Its length is 31 miles, of which 23 miles are underwater.
Its average depth is 150 feet under the seabed.
The channel crossing time for Eurostar is only 20 minutes.
The boring
(digging) of each tunnel was started from England and France to meet in the
middle. The six giant boring machines used to dig out the tunnels, once
assembled were larger than the finished tunnel. They could not be backed
out and removed. After each one completed its assigned job, they were
driven off-course to dig their own coffins and are forever entombed in the
bedrock of the English Channel, off to the side of each tunnel.
95 miles of tunnels were dug by nearly 13,000 engineers, technicians and workers.
The volume of rubble removed from the
tunnel is three times greater than that of the Cheops Pyramid in Egypt. And it has increased the size of Britain by 90 acres.
Equivalent to 68 football fields, this area has been made into a park.
Once exiting
the Chunnel, our speed increased to 300km/h (186mph) for the French part of the
trip.
First-Class was enough and
getting a taxi myself would not be THAT difficult, and it wasn't. However, finding the hotel was a bit
different. I never expected to find
so many small, fewer than 20 room, hotels with very similar names. We did find the right one, located on a
very small street with two-way traffic.
The hotel was very neat,
clean and only two blocks from the nearest underground station. The drawbacks were, no air conditioning
(A/C is not normally available in smaller hotels) and no lift (elevator). I was on what they called the 4th floor. But, by my count, it was actually the
5th. They start counting floors
with the floor above the ground. So
the floors are G, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. There
were 100 steps on a very narrow, winding stairway. Like London, the room was sparse with a
bed, table, TV and private in-room bath.
The City Rama tour bus was
a double-deck, air conditioned bus that passed by all of the major tourist
sights in Paris. Short stops were
made at several key locations so people could get out and have pictures taken by
others with themselves and the landmark in the same frame.
The most interesting place
I visited was the Eiffel Tower. I
elected for the full tour, which took me to the very top. This required two lifts. The first one was on an incline and had
some mechanical problems requiring us to transfer to another lift at 95m, 1st
level to go on to the 2nd level. At
this level, a straight up lift was used to take me to the top. The stop was the enclosed lower viewing
level. A short flight of stairs led
to the open observation platform just about 50' below the highest point of the
Tower. The view of Pairs was
absolutely beautiful. You could see
all the famous landmarks. It was a
bit hazy, so distant landmarks were sometimes obscured by the haze. It was still a very awesome place to
view Paris. Unfortunately, I didn't
get to see it at night.
Paris travel was a bit
more complicated because the underground is not as well marked and routes are
not as flexible as those I found on the London Tube. I was finally able to figure out how to
get from point to point in downtown Paris.
Eating in Paris is an
experience. Throughout the
metropolitan area are hundreds of sidewalk cafes. As I said before, little or no air conditioning exists in
Paris, so these cafes have both inside and outside seating. The outside seating has a canopy or awning to shield the
patrons from the sun, rain and/or pigeons.
The evening meal is seldom eaten until around 9:00pm and reservations are
definitely required for some of the more popular restaurants. Parisians don't get in a hurry when
eating. A "simple"
3-course meal may take upwards of an hour to enjoy.
Clothing and other
personal traits for Paris were also unique. Fewer body piercing seemed to be required. However, a cigarette in one hand and
cell phone in the other, are still the order of the day. But, a dog is definitely a fashion accessory here. I found dogs everywhere. In most places, where Fido is banned in
the States, he was welcomed in Paris. Bicycles
and roller blades replaced many of the motorcycles. On Sunday, I was caught in the regularly
schedules Saturday and Sunday "Blade Run". This mass of people, sometimes over 5,000, takes to the Paris
streets every weekend with police escorts and yellow-shirted "guides".
