Thank You French Cabbie

First let me say that I am indeed in Paris, but before I talk of that, let me start to explain the process of getting here.

The plan was to take the Chunnel across the English Channel. Mary's friend Theresa told us that a ticket should not be a problem and we could leave when ever on Sunday morning. We decided to sleep in and take our time. We left for the station at 11 and entered a very busy Eurostar office. When we got to the head of the line and asked for tickets to Paris, the lady looked at the bookings and could only find 1st class tickets at 150 pounds, or 300 dollars each. As you know, we don't really get a kick out of spend our parents well earned money frivolously, and well I am a cheapskate. We kindly backed out of the order and quickly went in search of an internet cafe in order to try to find another, cheaper way of getting to Paris. We walked about 10 blocks with all of our luggage. Keep in mind that mine is on my back with a last way in of 40 pounds. Unfortuneately every cafe we found was closed because it was sunday. Apparently the only things brits do on sundays is go to church and drink, or both at the same time. WE decided that we would try another option. We went back to the waterloo train station and ended up taking a train to Dover on thye coast. The cliffs in Dover were pristine and white. We evebn got a quick glimpse of the dover castle. It was a gamble that we would be able to catch a ferry, that we couldnt buy a ticket for, but we decided to make the gamble anyway. The ferry we took cost us 6 pounds with our eurail passes and we waited until 6 pm to take it. There were very few people on the ferry, but I have to say, it was quite nice, posh, ritzy, and very worth the price we paid for the ride. The ride was smooth and short. We spent most of the time finishing journals and snacking, since we missed dinner. When we got on the ferry, we had expected to spend the night in the train station in Calais, as we would get there after the last train to Paris. When we got off the train, we walked out of the station and found that the buses had stopped running.

As we were running through our options and coming to the conclusion that we would need a taxi, one pulled up right in front of us. The driver looked decidedly like Mr Clean and he asked if we needed a ride. We said Oui and he helped us with our bags. When we all had climbed in, he asked us where we were headed, we said Paris. The guy knew that the last train out of the main station had left and asked us what we were doing, we said sleeping in the station. The taxi driver would not have that. He used his mobile phone to check things and ended up, with our permission, driving us to a beautiflu rural train station outside of Calais that had a train going to Paris. Thanks to the cabdriver, who was well tipped, we got on the train to paris, having to spend an extra 22 euro for the first class on top of the eurail.

We made it to Paris, got off the train and took a series of metros in order to get into our very small flat near the embassy quarter. But we did, indeed make it to Paris.