London to Paris

We took a minicab to get to St Pancras station, having figured that getting to and through the tube with suitcases would be torture. For 20 pounds the driver clearly knew the side streets to use to avoid traffic. St Pancras is an oddity, a modernised old station that is partly like an airport as it has international handling. The Eurostar waiting lounge makes airports look good by comparison. I think they forgot to allow for the fact that unlike an airport our luggage was still with us. Then we caught the Eurostar express train. This was far less modern than I had expected. No Wi-Fi, no charging points for phones, no directable air-con and there were dirty ashtrays at the sides of the seats. Is this someone's revenge on the future come home to roost? It reminded me of the pre-upgrade Australind. At least once we got going It was a noticeably fast train - it was strange to be going so rapidly across ground. A short taxi ride from the station and we were on the right street trying to identify the block in which our apartment was to be found. Duly located it was up an extremely tight spiral staircase. I wish I was joking in saying it nearly killed me getting the larger suitcase up there. First things first - a nap. Several hours later it was apparent how problematic sleeping had been in the London apartment. Having settled in and unpacked we headed out for supplies and quickly found a suitable supermarket. No language problem, you can be mute and still do credit at a supermarket. Then we set off to find some dinner and soon had a choice of restaurants. We chose a Chinese called Iris and tackled the triple language puzzle of a Chinese menu in French. To speed things up they had an abbreviated English menu. The food tasted delicious. Back to the apartment to do some washing and plan our first solid day in Paris.