Day 6 – And away we go!

Sadly, today was our day to leave London. We packed last night (after a bit of a lay down after the Ripper tour), so it was pretty easy to get up and out.

Leann had her last black cab ride. Above is a shot out of the glass roof.

Gay was kind enough to come back up to take us out to breakfast! Gay and I had a champagne breakfast (her with Eggs Benedict, me with blueberry pancakes), and Leann had her first Full British Breakfast, complete with grilled tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, streaky bacon, black pudding, etc.

Gay sat with us while we waited on the Eurostar line to open up – as usual, my passport didn’t scan, so I had to go to “a real person” and get checked in. Leann had been looking to get her passport stamped (which hadn’t happened at Heathrow); when she got trapped between the two doors that are supposed to scan you in and then out, so she, too, had to go to the “real person.” And we both got our passports stamped! So that wasn’t such a bad thing.

The train was packed – lots of folks heading over to the Olympics. A few photos of the “Train Trivia” that popped up.

We had heard from our black cab driver the other day that we should visit the St. Pancras hotel, especially the stairway, which has been featured in many music videos, including the Spice Girls’ first big hit. Since we hadn’t been able to really go exploring, Gay took some photos around the station and hotel for us. She said that staircase was as impressive as it had been advertised!

We’re now in the Hotel Marais Grands Boulevards. It is one of the top “Clef Verte” (Green Key) hotels in France, in a neighborhood in the Marais, and seems to be accessible to the Metro and many other things. There is a cute cafe, a pizza place, and a burger place with amazing reviews; there is also a grocery across the street. (There are also hair salons literally every block – perhaps not so much for cutting as for braiding?) Have to say – it is HOT, and HUMID! As soon as we stepped off the train it was like walking into a wall. Thank goodness the hotel has both A/C and blackout curtains (since our room faces due West.

We’re now watching the Olympics on TV, though (whut-WAHH), we can’t find anything in English and my VPN/Xfinity remote doesn’t seem to be working to get us alternative channels. We had gotten quite fond of the BBC reporters and the Great Britain team, plus they did a lot of coverage of the U.S. Team. Now, we’re just getting the French team, which isn’t quite as great, since our French isn’t really up to snuff to understand what they’re discussing, and the French are doing well in sports where we’d rather watch something else. Handball…More handball…(Who knew?)…plus we’ve seen the French swim, judo, dive, play basketball, etc. But it’s not against teams that we care about. (WHO SAID THAT?!) We did get to watch some of the rowing when we were waiting on the train, however, which was great.