Never wish upon a Eurostar

We'll start with the good news, then we'll try to tell the bad news in a good way. Ross and I woke up and checked out of our hotel on Wednesday, locking our luggage into a closet in the hotel so we could fit in some last minute tourism before catching an 8:20pm Eurostar train from Paris to London, putting us in England at about 10:30 that night. Ross phoned the Selmer and Buffet factories, neither of which was able to offer a tour at such late notice. I forgot about Vandoren until we were out of the city. Then Ross called his host family with whom he'll be staying during his term in Paris to see if he could drop off a bag with him so he didn't have to carry so much around London. We found the apartment, found our way in, and then proceeded to find a place for lunch. On our way, we stumbled right down the street from where Ross was going to be staying to another fantastic French cathedral. We ate lunch at a place nearby that specialized in Caribbean food and specialty and very rare rums. We didn't bother with the rum (most of it was really expensive), but we had a quality meal (and it was surprisingly economic...small, but really cheap and really good). I had a sort of prawn and crab copotte or something. I forget exactly what it was called, but it was prawns, crab, and a bunch of spices cooked in eggs in a custard dish or something. The taste outweighed the texture, and probably since it was pretty much a bowl of protein it stayed with me until dinner. We decided on a few last museums while we ate, and then set off to see Napolean's Tomb.

This is a decoration that they had in the hotel right next to the stairs. I hadn't noticed it until I was waiting outside with Ross on the phone to his host family and realized it was an old pedal-operated Singer sewing machine.

This is the fountain that is sitting outside the cathedral we saw from Ross's host family's apartment.

The cathedral, under construction. This is probably the most attractive aspect (for me) about living in a city that is more than 300 years old, that you literally walk out Ross's apartment door, walk to the corner of the street, look right, and at the end of the street is this.

Napolean's tomb. I lost my ticket somewhere in the armoury, so I wasn't actually allowed inside. Ross saw it, and I got a flyer, so those plus the fact that I've been there pretty much gave me the same feeling as if I'd been inside. The armoury was the important part, anyway...

The first suit of armour (I'm practicing British spelling) you see as you walk into the armoury. Outside the door are two more suits on horseback with lances, their horses rearing, but I didn't take any pictures of them, I don't think. This guy was big.

This guy and I were virtually the same height. Pretty sure I could wear that suit.
I was so mad we couldn't go in this room. There were about six windows just like this one.

Ross and the Horn of Gondor.

What idiot invented glass, anyway?

This one looks just like the cover of our colouring book. Ross thought it was sad that we had a colouring book that was historically accurate suits of armour. I don't see why at all. And speaking of Ross, if you think it's annoying having to look at all these pictures of armour, imagine how he felt. And there were a lot more swords, etc. than I'm bothering to upload.

My battery died sometime in the armoury, and I used Ross's camera to take some more in depth photos. People always look at you funny when you take a picture of a suit of armour's elbow, or his foot or fauld of mail in the back, kind of like, "Dude, it's just a buckle." Oh, how little they know... After the tomb (which was after the armoury), we went to a tapestry museum (mostly famous because of the number of unicorn tapestries) housed in a pretty old building. The building was quite impressive, built on top of a Roman bath which they were currently excavating. I was able to identify the type of Roman brickwork that was still exposed, thanks to my quarter in Rome (opus mixtum, probably early to mid-empire).

Celtic torques (neck-wrings) made from gold; also in the tapestry museum.

Medieval footwear; tapestry museum. This looked about a size 7 1/2.
Once we finished the tapestry museum, we bolted over to yet another museum of art housed in a 16th century mansion. The mansion was pretty cool, and huge. It had obviously been worked on quite a bit, modernized and refurbished throughout the centuries (though thankfully not in ours). A lot of the art was from different periods, one room was a series of burlesque drawings from the late 19th/early 20th century. Since the battery was dead in my camera, I didn't take any pictures in this museum. I'll have to get some from Ross at some point. This, however, is where the day gets interesting, and not in a pre-17th century way (for once).

Ross and I had dinner back near the hotel, picked up our bags, and made our way to the train station to catch our Eurostar. It's the only train that goes to London from Paris, and it does it in almost record time (it takes about two hours, and the trip from Seattle to Vancouver by train, which is shorter (not to mention it doesn't go underwater), rarely takes less than three and a half hours). However, there had apparently been a fire in the tunnel that goes beneath the English Channel (affectionately referred to as the "Chunnel") several days prior. The Eurostar company had not notified anyone, and it was only allowing a certain number of trains through per day, compromising many people's trains. Ours was compromised. When we arrived they explained that we would have to wait until the next train, which left at 6:45am the next morning. We lost one night at our hostel in London, and after about three hours of calling hotels in Paris we couldn't find a room. One of the guys that worked for the Eurostar told us we could stay in the station. After a brief fiasco with the station's baggage check area, we took our bags over to a nearby hotel (which was unfortunately full for the night) and locked them up there for 12 euros. We returned to the station to find somewhere remotely warm to sleep until the morning. At about 1:30am, French police and police dogs (that would not stop barking) came to tell us we were not allowed to stay in the station. Now we were out on the streets. Standing in front of the station, the doors blocked by police officers, and the far corner covered in a makeshift hobo camp, we set off to see if we could stay somewhere else. There were no rooms nearby, and we didn't want to stay in an ally or a metro station. Luckily, one of the nearby hotel tenants told us about a 24 hour bar just down the street. We got in and it was warm, finally, and Ross tried haphazardly to nap on the table while I read "Playing for Pizza" (finished it, by the way) and ordered a beer about every 45 minutes so we looked like customers until 5:00am. Then the station looked a little more open, so we wandered back to the hotel, picked up our bags, and waited where we thought the line began for the Eurostar until 6:40. Then we tried to get through, when we were told the que began at the bottom of the stairs, on the other side. Now we were about 100 people back, and none of these people had arrived before us. We were definitely the first people in the station, and because they hadn't blocked off the front stairway properly, we were now literally more than 100 people back in line. After waiting anxiously for about 45 more minutes to see if we could even get our tickets exchanged, they exchanged them and hurried us up the stairs to customs and security. I got through customs just fine, since I had my visa and was just going to the U.K.. Ross on the other hand only had a passport, no French or English visa (because his program was short enough it didn't require him to have one), and unfortunately was detained because he didn't have a ticket or proof for when he would be leaving the U.K. (he was planning on meeting up with his mom in London after I left for Aberdeen, and he wasn't sure how long they were going to spend in the U.K.). I was urgently pushed through security. I tried to wait for Ross, and when he was led away I thought he was finally getting into the security line to have his bags scanned...but he didn't come out the other side. Eurostar staff were constantly telling me to keep moving and get on the train, and after a lot of waiting, worrying, and even more berrating from the staff I went down the stairs and got on the train, hoping Ross would make it or already be on. Not having slept all night, I was out immediately once I was in my seat, stress or no. Once in London, I was very happy to be in an English speaking country again (especially since I didn't have Ross with me to translate had I been somewhere French). I got off the train, found and bought an adapter to hopefully connect my computer to the internet so I could send him an e-mail or something, but I coudln't find an outlet anywhere in any of the London station restaurants or shops. After searching for something of the sort, I resolved to just wait by the arrivals section for the Eurostar, and about three hours later, Ross came out the doors. Relief...finally. Then we hopped on the London metro system, which is pretty easy to navigate, and found our way to our London hostel, after which we treated ourselves to a delicious lunch at a fairly upscale Indian restaurant (London is more known for its foreign cuisine than its own, unless you're talking about fish and chips). We were pretty tired.