[L.E.P.A.K series: Paris] Chap 11: To Paris with Love

After sharing our humble shepherd's pie together for dinner, we then proceeded to wash up and hit the sack early as we have a loooooong day ahead. Not to mention a very early morning start. Now if there's TWO strong selling points that Tune Hotels pride on are their power shower and comfy bed – the two core essentials for tired travellers like us. So we snuggled in as early as 10pm...

... and woke up at 5 freaking am to catch the first tube out to King Cross St Pancras Station. We were literally standing right in front of the tube station waiting for the shutters to open... and before you start calling us crazy, we were not alone! Hah!

Oh oh! Before I go any further, let me tell you about this super duper
yummy yogurt we had for breakfast.

This is crazy stuff man!

Honey walnut yogurt yo! It was soooo goooood. All for a not-too-expensive-yet-not-exactly-cheap price of £0.79p. I mean it's cheap if you ignore the difference in currency and take it as 1:1 but if convert over that's like RM4.00 for a cup of yogurt. Then again, Cik Anai and I saw a walnut yogurt (minus the honey) selling at a whooping price of over RM10 at Cold Storage back here in Malaysia. So... £0.79p is so worth the every savouring slurp we had with that yogurt.

Yummy yogurt deserves one more shot! See it says right there
“Thick & Creamy Yogurt – Walnut & Greek Honey”. Yaaa meeee!
Alright, end of yogurt commercial. :P Back to our early morning adventure.

So what's with all the fuss about being early anyway?

Well, we were on our way to catch the 6.53am Eurostar train to Pa-Pa-Paris!

That's the Eurostar waiting lounge right there. We were worried that we might mess up the check-in process or get lost inside King Cross station since we have never been there before and therefore got off on an early start. Better be safe than sorry yo! And seriously this is one ride we cannot afford to miss. After all, it cost a small fortune to ride on the Eurostar. On the contrary, we found our way easily in the station and the check-in process was swift with our print-out-and-scan tickets. So with another stamp in our passport we made our way to the waiting lounge.

There was an information counter at the waiting lounge that was manned by a friendly staff. We picked out some free yet very informative brochures of Paris to read on board and even bought ourselves a carnet of tickets. That way we don't have to fuss about language barrier when we arrive in Paris later. A carnet consists of ten tickets that can be used in all Metro, RER, bus and tram rides in Paris. However buying it here at King Cross would mean you will be buying it in pound instead of euros and the difference in currency is a disadvantage in this case as we bought it at a slightly higher price compared to that of in Paris. But it is most definitely time-saving and convenient, so we went ahead and bought them. We also managed to pick up some good old junk food at the convenience store.

Finally we were called for boarding.

That's me in the compulsory "Hey, I rode the Eurostar!" pose. :D


The train was pretty empty since it was a weekday and we almost had the entire cabin to ourselves save a hand full of others. What's more we even booked ourselves the centre seats designed to accommodate a company of four. It has two double-seaters facing each other, sharing a single table. We took our chance with these seats hoping to either have the extra leg space or if the seats in front of us were occupied, well there's no harm in making new friends. ;-)


But there was no one to make friends with and instead Cik Anai pop over
and sat across the table. *grins*


And finally we were truly really definitely on our way. We grabbed our load of junks out and munch away on our very unhealthy breakfast. In our defence the Real McCoy's grilled steak flavoured chips were de-li-cious!


Cik Anai enjoying her yummy chips!


Time to show off the wonderful morning scenery Cik Anai managed to
capture along the way.

Rajin membaca konon. Hehe.

Did we just pass the border? *clueless*

Art or vandalism? *shrugs* I don't know.
All I know is that we are almost there!!

And WE ARE HERE!

After being in the cosy train for over two hours, we were once again greeted by the chilly breeze as we stepped out onto the platform. The real bummer though was not the chill but was the fact that we lost one hour due to the time difference between London and Paris. That means lesser time for us to see Paris. Not cool, not cool at all.

Time to hunt down the RER!

Our first stop... off to meet the hunchback of Notre Dame.

Umm... I mean Notre Dame Cathedral.

Promise no delays on the next update. Stay tuned!