Our experience of Eurostar has always been good. An earlier trip to Avignon when we ultimately slept in Napoleon’s bed was excellent. See story one of book two (The Whinging Pome – On The Road Again) and spot the only major typo in the whole book!
This latest booking has been the train to Paris from St. Pancras Station London. Well-organized process for security, passport controls and boarding. We chat up three ladies doing research on travellers, what a hoot they are. One is from Zimbabwe, another one is from South London and the third is from East London. I go through the questions and they laugh at most of my made-up answers, we chatted till boarding. They end up on the Whinging Pome Site and one day they are coming to Sri Lanka. The big-as-life Zimbabwean lady and Jezzabel share stories and contact details.
The train is on time, boarding is well organised and staff are at hand to help us with our four cases. Jezzabel has one empty case for shopping in Paris. She informs me London is more expensive than Paris. As a man I’m working on a more basic approach…. don’t think I need anything in Paris other than wine, restaurants, music, cemeteries and Jezzabel. I don’t do art galleries.
You can better the price of going to Paris from the UK by train if you want to risk low-cost airline carriers. This normally comes with add-on costs, delays, luggage restrictions and travelling in and out of the airport chaos.
Eurostar is a star product with clear processes and rules communicated well in advance. The duty-free and duty-paid shop run by Dufry looks like an afterthought. Clearly, water is the biggest seller in two meters of space, liquour is in the same space, and perfume is in two locations. I suspect there was no plan for duty-free shops pre-Brexit, so space was not planned.
Friendly, fun, down-to-earth rail staff are as efficient as the many up-end airline teams. The train staff must have been given happy tablets.
Paris is said to be one the most visited cities in the world … what a melting pot.