A 4am alarm isn’t particularly early for us. I’d be lying if I said we’d never found satisfaction in being the ones to wake the boys up, for a change, but they’re pretty used to it by now, and in the summer it’s full daylight anyway.
Our unneccesarily-early taxi got us to Waverley with plenty of time to spare, so, selfies with the skyline taken, we got on the first train to London (bearing the name The Flying Scotsman) and settled in with our First Class menus to choose our breakfasts. Mild alarm ensued when the announcement that the kitchen wasn’t working came out, but fortunately they were able to repair it at our sole stop, Newcastle, so we enjoyed full LNER breakfasts, and waffles with Nutella for the boys.
Stepping off the train into the mid-morning London heat, we were glad to know of the fountains for the boys to cool off in, and we had left a few hours to meander around Kings Cross… and remembering that we would never have wanted to do that, twenty years ago! The artisinal coffee and pastry wagons were out in force, Waitrose provided one last Beano, and we played some ping pong for a little while before selecting our M&S picnic and heading through security. Which was hoaching.
At least it’s all underground, the number of people all together in the departure lounge, even before our train was delayed by nearly two hours, would have made it unbearable in most spaces in the middle of that heatwave.
Something had gone wrong with our train and it needed replacing, but it needed one with the same seat layout so that all the reservations would work… which meant we heard comments like “you feel sorry for them all really, almost feel bad for getting on our train…” from people on trains which should have left after ours.
The system worked though, we eventually got on our comfortable train, stayed reasonably cool throughout, and we were whipping through the tunnel before we knew it. Despite warnings that the tunnel was dug through rock, the boys were still disappointed that we didn’t see any fish.
Paris was roasting, and as is required, we hit a roadblock immediately. The four (working) ticket machines for the Gare du Nord metro were overloaded, and without a contactless option, a long queue and much moaning about it ensued… but we perservered. By eight o’clock, we’d taken line 4 and done the short walk to our F1 hotel in the 14e Arrondiesment.
Jennie had discovered that with us arriving in the lead up to French National Day, we wouldn’t be able to go up the Eiffel Tower on our full day in Paris, and the boys really wanted to do it, so despite having already been up for fifteen hours, we headed back out the door, and navigated the Metro.
We could only go to the second floor: they were already fitting fireworks higher than that, but the view and the sunset was still brilliant. We only went up on Angus’ insistence, and so of course he was the one who got in a grump when we got up there… but even he was definitely working hard not to smile at times. The mask certainly slipped when we saw some distant fireworks on the way down, and when the tower started sparkling as we reached the bottom!
Back down, and a picnic on the riverbanks before a slightly scary return home due to an overcrowded platform and people pushing (we were well away from the masses but still, it could have been bad if the train were any later.) We fell into our beds, and slept like logs, despite the lack of A/C.
Watch out Europe… we’ve arrived.
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