My entry title may seem a bit obscure, but some of my readers may recall an old movie called ‘If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium’, a comedy about a European tour that covered a lot of places in such a short time that people started to get confused as to which city/country they were in. Well, that’s my recollection of the plot — I can’t actually remember if I ever watched it! 

So after only ONE night in Paris, we were on the move again — this time to London. We wheeled our bags to the nearby Metro and got ourselves to the Gare du Nord, a short walk from the Metro station. As we passed by lots of small shops selling suits and fancy bridal dresses, etc. Michael commented on how much Paris reminded him of some of the third world countries we have visited. This was clearly an area populated by those originating from middle eastern countries. (I forgot to mention how disturbing it was to see whole families of Syrian refugees sitting in the streets (especially on the Champs Élysées) begging for money. My heart breaks for those small children. )

At the station, it took us a while to work out that travellers on the Eurostar train had to go up to the next level to be processed. Amazingly, they had run out of immigration forms — a bit of bad planning! We cleared the French border patrol and then, just a few metres ahead, had to go through the UK border patrol. Having no papers, every traveller had to state how long they were planning to stay in the UK and where they were going next, etc. Once we’d had our luggage scanned, we unsuccessfully tried to get into the lounge (Australian AMEX holders are not eligible, but other AMEX card holders are, apparently!), and then settled down on two stools near a power point where I charged up my iPad. We could see the crowds queuing up to go through immigration, and so were thankful we had arrived at around opening time. The only eventful thing that happened during the 90-minute wait was that I found a mobile phone left in the toilet cubicle I visited. I handed it in to the assistant desk, but later wished that I had tried ringing someone with it first, as I might have had some luck in locating the owner. As we were moving through to the platform, I checked with the woman to whom I had given the phone earlier and ascertained that the owner had not yet retrieved her phone. They were going to lock it in their safe — I doubt that it will ever be reunited with her!

The train was quite comfortable, although we didn’t have power points (my iPad still needed more recharging). Although it didn’t feel fast, we read that the Eurostar’s maximum logged speed is 334.7km/hour! You could only really appreciate the speed at which we were travelling when the track occasionally ran alongside a main road — the cars and trucks looked as though they were crawling along at a snail’s pace! Most fascinating were the clouds — they drifted by so fast that they had a real 3D appearance that you usually only get when flying. I dozed on and off, unsuccessfully trying to prevent my jaw from dropping! A small child across the aisle from us gave her mum a hard time for much of the journey — her whining was a bit annoying, but mostly I felt sorry for the mother who was desperately trying to placate her.

It was amazing to think that, when we were in the tunnel, we were travelling over 50 metres underneath the bottom of the English Channel. The whole trip from Paris to London took about 2.5 hours — imagine if we could travel from Adelaide to Melbourne in that time!

The skies in England were very overcast, but by the time we emerged at the St Pancras Station in London, the sun was shining again. The temperature was much milder than in Paris — very pleasant indeed for the half-hour walk to our hotel in Temple Court, just off the Strand. (I feel like I’m playing Monoploy when I walk around the streets of London!)

After dumping our bags, we set off for a walk to Leicester Square to collect our tickets for the following night’s performance of ‘The Book of Mormon’. Along the way, we tried to change some money to get some Turkish lira in preparation for our stay in Istanbul, but most places had run out of the currency. (The only place that hadn’t had a poor exchange rate and charged a hefty commission.) Tickets collected from the box office, we found a restaurant nearby that offered a 2-course deal for £12. 95 (nearly $23, except that we used pounds that we’d bought at a better rate last year!). The soup was OK, and the grilled salmon with chips and salad was delicious. We paid, and had begun strolling back towards the hotel when we heard someone calling out to us. The young French waitress was highly distressed, because her boss had told her that they couldn’t accept two of the notes we had given her — apparently the £5 and £10 notes are now out of circulation! Having had no idea that the money had changed since we were here last year, we gladly accompanied her back to the restaurant and handed over a valid £20 note.

It has been a long day, and so we were pleased to finally get to bed...also pleased that this time we had thought to request a sheet so that we didn’t have to remove the quilt from its cover in order to be able to sleep. Yes, it was Monday, so we must be in London!