Because we had left it until Friday to book the tickets we ended up on the 15:04 train which gave us time this morning to finish packing, make some sandwiches for the trip and checking that everything was locked then about 15 minutes before we planned to leave the heavens opened. Luckily by the time we were scheduled to leave it had stopped so we set off and started walking to the station. About 10 minutes after leaving it started spitting, then the heavens opened again. Luckily we were near the bus stop, so we checked and the bus was due in about 10 minutes so we decided to wait for the bus rather than get soaking on the way to the station. The bus was running late but it didn’t matter as it still arrived at the station about the same time as we would have arrived if we had carried on walking. We brought our tickets to St Pancras, and the very helpful person at the station actually worked out the cheapest fare for us so we actually have our return tickets as well. A bit of a theme was forming for the day as the train from Reading to Paddington was late, but again it didn’t really matter as we had left extra time and we finally arrived in Paddington about 1pm. Our train was scheduled to leave at 15:04 and they had recommended we arrive by 13:30 so having jumped on the tube we got to St Pancras at about 20 past so perfect timing. Unfortunately the theme for the day took a whole new turn at this point! We walked up to the Eurostar entrance and saw a bit of a queue, we didn’t worry we just thought we would walk to the end of it and we would be able to get through passport control and relax and have a coffee. How wrong could you be we walked to what we thought was the end of the queue by the back entrance to St Pancras. Unfortunately the queue went along the side of the train station, down the road, around the corner, in and out of a service yard and finally to the end of the road! We joined this queue but were told that we would probably be turned round at the end of the queue as we should only join the queue an hour before our departure time, so we went for a walk round St Pancras and then joined the queue at 14:00. By 15:00 we were back inside the building but nowhere near getting through passport control but by 16:00 we had made it through the bag check and almost to the French passport booth. From there it was plain sailing, we were on board by about 16:15 and by 17:00 we were on our way and heading toward the channel tunnel. It was a little slow on the train but the fact we were moving was a plus so we just decided to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. We had a meal of sorts delivered, it should have been curried chicken but although it was chicken it didn’t taste particularly of curry, but it came with wine (for me) and beer (for Chris), they couldn’t deliver hot drinks to the table so we had an extra drink each then before we knew it we were in France and on our way to Belgium. We finally arrived about 8pm local time, just to complete our day, there is a national rail strike in Belgium today so a lot of the trains were delayed or possibly cancelled but we managed to find one that was heading to Brussels Central and jumped on it. The walk to our apartment only took about 10 minutes then it was just a case of unpacking, heading to the local shop to pick up some beers then finally relax in our home for the next 6 days.
