Posted 8:23 PM

Paris Holiday

Sooo my darling and I have just come back from 5 days in Paris. We had a wonderful time. I'll spare you the details - we did most of the touristy stuff, and found a couple of lovely restaurants thanks to the Lonely Planet guide (this one and this one).

We did have somewhat of a lucky break on our journey out. We were travelling on the fantastic eurostar, leaving at 12:30pm. There were some sort of technical problems in the channel tunnel, which meant there were trains due to leave at approx 10:30am and 11:30am that only left at around 12:20pm. So at 12:25pm, we were pretty much all on our train, when an announcement comes over the station tannoy system - "Attention, attention. This is an emergency. Please leave the station by the nearest available exit. This is not a drill." This message was repeated an awful lot. But the train manager told us to stay where we were and that we would be leaving shortly, which we did at about 12:35pm. I guess they decided that the quickest way out of the station for us, was by train, especially for the people way down the platform on the 17th and 18th carriage (they'd've had to walk a very long way to get out of the station). It turns out there was a suspect package (note the incorrect information about the station being evacuated at midday - it definitely was nearer 12:25pm) and the station was closed for two hours after it. In the end we arrived at Paris about 25 minutes late - most definitely a lucky escape considering the large delays if we were on an earlier - or worse, a later train.

This hasn't put me off my preference for trains rather than planes if it is feasible though; indeed I do intend to make a post about that at some point in the future.

We took a lot of photos so I'm uploading them in two batches. The first batch is up now, and, in a benjaminalexander.co.uk first, a couple of videos - all located via the usual link on the left. Also I've started getting through the backlog from the second half of last year. Enjoy!

Labels: eurostar, holiday, Paris, trains

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