July 12: Off to Paris

Simpler blog entry today, as it was chiefly a travel day. Most of the morning was spent in packing, having breakfast, and saying goodbye to our excellent hosts Pauline & Dave. Reid did pop out for a short outing to a local grocery to replace some bread and jams; we had consumed a lot of their supply during our stay! P&D had to take their unfortunate sick cat to the vet, but despite that distraction, they still thought to bring us home some sweet pastries called Bath buns. The buns were quite good with the jams.

After taking our leave around 11 a.m., we hopped on board our last double decker to Finsbury Park station (in our “usual” seats in the back of the upper level). The Victoria line of the Tube took us to King’s Cross / St. Pancras station. For you Harry Potter fans, you would recognize King’s Cross as the station where Harry and other students magically access the Hogwarts Express from platform 9 & 3/4. There is a photo spot here where you can push the trolley through the wall, just like Harry did; although we didn’t wait in line for it. The kids did enjoy peeking through the Harry Potter gift shop there; we may return here at the tail end of our trip.

Next we made our way to the enormous St. Pancras international train terminal. I was curious why this area has its name; Google provides this interesting answer:

“The parish was named after Saint Pancras, a 14-year-old boy who had converted to Christianity and would not renounce his faith. As a result, he was beheaded by Diocletian in Rome in 304AD. He is the patron saint of children. St Pancras is a Greek name meaning 'the one that holds everything'.”

Well, the St. Pancras terminal sure felt like a place that holds everything, if you mean everything you might find in a busy train station, including tons of people. The line felt like forever to get through airport style security and passport control, but really it only took just under an hour. While waiting to board our train,  Beth sorted out some snacks, and Reid read a bit of the next Lily book to Faith & Beth, where Lily is going to Paris! (See Oxford blog entry for more about Lily.)

The Eurostar train service from London to Paris is a wonder of modern engineering, travelling at high speed (around 300 km/h) and tunnelling around 75m underneath the English Channel (the “Chunnel”). Two hours ride and - poof! - you’re in Paris! We arrived at the Gare du Nord station around 6 pm local time. Our last task was to make our way to our booked AirBnB.

We planned to do this via the subway, called the Metro. Online sources stated there is a multi use card we could buy, kind of like the Oyster card in London, called a Navigo Decouverte pass, that would give us unlimited transit travel for the week in Paris.

Unfortunately, it requires passport style photos. There are a couple of photo booths near the Navigo service counter; we took pictures of all 5 of us, but the machine would not accept payment; very frustrating waste of time. In the end, the Navigo guy said we only needed photocopies of our actual passports, and he did that and assembled the passes for us at the counter (which saved us 8 euros per person on the passes).

We took the Metro line number 4 and got off at Strasbourg-St. Denis station; from there it was a four minute walk to our AirBnB. Even in the short walk, you could tell we were in Paris, a different city and feel from London. For one thing, it’s easier to cross the street as they drive on the same side as back home!

Our AirBnB hosts, Arneau and Jeanne, met us and were very enthusiastic about showing us the apartment. The building dates back to 1791, and has much of the original brick structure. They renovated the space with all kinds of modern amenities, although the layout might be considered a little weird by Canadian standards. The air conditioning, after our hot travel day, was particularly welcome.  The four of us who could got a good first dose of listening to and speaking French with our hosts. (Faith is scheduled to begin late French immersion this fall.)

After the long day, the kids (Luke in particular) had no interest in exploring at all, and were hungry. Beth and I headed out to find a local simple grocer where we picked up some dinner supply (pasta and salad). We then watched a fun Netflix family film called the Sea Beast, and settled into beds.