On our fourth day in London Megan and I slept in after our fun night out. Our train was scheduled to leave at 4pm and we didn't have any more sight seeing in London on our agenda. We took our time getting ready, eating breakfast, and packing up our backpacks. We checked out of our hotel right before noon to make our way towards the train station.
Since we had plenty of time we decided to go to Westminster Abbey right by our hotel. We had walked by it before but hadn't gone in. We sauntered through the gift shop and took a look at the chapel but as Megan and I joked, "You've seen one Abbey, you've seen them all". Since we had only had a light breakfast, we were ready for lunch. We wanted to eat something extra British-y and we found a pub with a good menu. I had some sausage, potatoes, and peas all topped with gravy and Megan had some split pea soup. When we were finished we hopped on the tube towards St. Pancras train station which is right across from King's cross station. As a Harry Potter nerd, I was really excited to go to King's cross station and try to make it through platform 9 and three quarters. I had no idea that about a billion other people had that same idea and it was now a tourist destination complete with a gift shop. They had a sign with a replica of Harry's luggage that you could take a picture with but it was like 10£ and the line was really long. Instead Megan took a picture of me by the gift shop and I took a picture of a random kid who was posing by the sign.
We found where our train would leave from, but we still had two hours until it left. They wouldn't even let us go through security until an hour before it departed so we just relaxed in the train station. There was a lot of stores and I walked around and window shopped. I got some snacks from the grocery store. I don't know what it is, but I always love grocery stores in other countries. They had a lot of healthy convenient food so I bought some snacks for the train ride with the few English pounds I had left. We finally went through security, then waited some more. We shared one last pint in London. Finally they announced the train to Paris was boarding! We excitedly got on and found our assigned seats and began our 2.5 hour ride to Paris. The eurostar trains travel at 186 miles per hour, except in the tunnel under the English Chanel where they go about 100 miles per hour. We enjoyed some french wine from the dining car and tried to look at the scenery out our window but everything was a blur. It was fun going into the tunnel under the English Chanel and coming out and seeing the french countryside. The ride went by fast and before we new it we were in Paris!
Our first task was figuring out the Paris metro system. In London we got refillable cards that you'd slide and they'd charge you for each ride (and the cost varied depending on how long of a trip it was). In Paris they just had paper tickets that were a flat price that you'd use one for every ride. We figured out what train to take to get us to our hotel and headed in that direction. Everything was in French obviously, but a lot of people speak English and thankfully my phone worked to help navigate us in the right direction. After a short Metro Ride we got off and walked the rest of the way to our hotel. Everything everywhere was so beautiful. We joked "Are we in a Paris movie right now?" There were so many people eating outside in gorgeous cafes, cobblestone roads, and beautiful buildings. Paris was breathtaking. We found the Hotel Dauphine Saint-Germain and checked in. Once again we had a great "hote loc" (hotel location). We were walking distance from Notre Dame, the Seine river, the Louvre museum, and a metro station to take us everywhere else. It was about 9pm and we were tired from the day of traveling but we freshened up and walked to the Seine to catch the Parisian sunset and get a glimpse of la tour Eiffel (or Eiffy for short). After basking in the glow of the sunset and taking dozens of pictures on a bridge we found a cute restaurant where we grabbed a late dinner. We ate outside like the Parisians love to do. I had a small pizza and Megan had some French onion soup. That girl loves soup. We went back to our hotel so we could rest up for the day of exploring Paris that lay ahead.
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