Day 11: Lille to London (Day 1)

Bonjour and soon to be hello!

As I was saying in my last post that we were in the super sketchy hostel, but it was super cheap...so I guess you get what you paid for. We knew that we wanted to be a the ferry fairly early so that we didn't have any issues like Kehl. So as we are on the road we have about an hour before we need to leave on the ferry according to the GPS. Lots of time, but then there is construction in France (like Canada) and a huge line up to get to the tolls, so that cut our time to half and hour. Jeff was looking at our train tickets and noticed that we weren't leaving from the Ferry as originally thought...now we have no idea where we are leaving from as I thought that we were leaving from the Ferry...that would be why we were dropping the car off there...but that was not the case!

When we dropped the car off to Europcar the guy at the desk said that the station was 21km away (and it is 9am and we leave on the train at 9:36!) Holy Crap! How do we get there? Bus, shuttle, nope by Cab only. So we found a cabbie who could get us there but it will cost 35euros...what? I only had pounds left...so he raced (literally over the speed limit) to get us there in 15 minutes. Now the problem is that we needed to be there 30min before the train left to do British Customs and have our bags scanned...WHAT!!!

Jeff is jumping around trying to get someone's attention and they tell us it is too late, but they will see what they can do. They were a little grouchy, but nice enough to get us through. The British customs had us fill out forms very quickly and he asked me what was my profession...and I said I worked for the Government of Canada and Jeff was a student...he was like "Well lets get our through for our compatriot!" So he was rushing us through and the French scanner guys were hurrying us on as fast as possible and we got on the train just as it was leaving the station. They don't wait for anyone!

We are on our way!

This was a fairly quick train as it was about 1.5hrs and then the time change back an hour once we get to England.

St Pancras Station

We get to St. Pancras - which is were our hostel was located and decided to head right there in hopes our room was ready or at least lockers. We had to get lockers but it was fairly simple. Seemed like a really nice hostel too. So with our arrival at 9:30 am we have a whole day to kill before we can check in at 2pm. So we decided to head to t Victoria and Albert Museum for the morning...I knew I would be here a long time. Saw tones of awesome dresses and stuff..

18th century gown

We ate lunch there and continued on our way. Our feet were quite tired by the end of it. So as we were walking along to catch the next Tube back to the hostel. We wanted to figure out what to do that evening. We stopped in a small convenience store with groceries and saw the beer section...humm what could be the prices, well they had Strongbow there in cans about 440ml and in packs of 4 and the cost was £4! Unbelievable! So cheap! I need to move to London!

We head back to the hostel and decided that we would try and go see Les Miserables that night. I have never seen it, but know all the music and words. We head out and decide not to get dinner as it was already late in getting out. We get to the theatre and get ticktes (OK they weren't cheap but so worth it!) they theatre was really nice.

the logo on the scime.

The show was fantastic! Valjean and Javert were excellent, I didn't like Marius as he had a weird verbrato, but all together enjoyable!

A nice picture of us at the theatre.

It is now 11pm and we are trying to find something to eat, but nothing is really open as we find out it was their bank holiday! No wonder it was so busy! Well we then decide it is time for bed if we want to do anything tomorrow!

Ern
PS. I do have lots of pics of Trez at the wedding...I will post them to Facebook.