Today we are changing countries, and one of my sisters has never been in a country in which the populations speaks anything other than English so she will have some adjusting to do.

The morning was a bit of a dawdle with a late start, a few conversations along the way, and then the Tube to Kings Cross/St Pancras. Two separate stations but only a road width apart, The Eurostar leaves from St Pancras International and checking in is similar to a flight, security scans for baggage and passengers, passports and ticket checks and up the ramp to the platform.

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While I’ve been on the Eurostar a couple of times before, I’ve never gone southbound, so it was sort of new to me, although I understood what to do and where to go. The EU passport came in handy once more, the none EU people (like my sisters!) had a longer queue and manual processing, I went through the electronic gates quite quickly, although there were a few first timers doing that too!

St Pancras is one of those old stations built by engineers, not accountants, and the arched roof and the detailing on brickwork and pillars handles its age well.

The ninety odd miles to the tunnel went quickly and we plunged under the channel, into the darkness. Emerging into the brightness, France appeared before us and with the naps over and an hour’s more travel ahead of us the queues for toilets and the bar started to build …

Our speed built up once out of the tunnel and the ride became a little rougher, from a rolling kind of gait in the tunnel to a jerking, bumping ride at times. Many trains a day, every day, take their toll of rails and trackbed.

By Velvet – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Gare du Nord is the Paris terminus of the Eurostar and is a massive building, even grander than than St Pancras. There was a strike on the day we arrived and the Métro was closed, so we looked for alternatives, Uber was on Tariff C and the fare would be about €75, buses (fare €1.90) were jam packed, and we finally ended up in a regular taxi for about €20 (plus a well deserved €5 tip).

With my sisters settled in to their hotel near Montmartre, I headed to my hotel on the rue du Chemin Verte. It was a lovely night and I was happy to be back in France, in Paris, so I walked …