Horrific Day!

Hello all,

It’s been quite a horrific day traveling from Paris back to London. Our Eurostar train was stopped in the French Coastal town of Callais because a fire alarm had been triggered in the Chunnel. After about an hour wait we were told that the train would be returning to Paris and anyone that wanted to stay on could and they would be put in a hotel for the night.

Anyone who wished to travel on to London would need to grab a local train from the Eurostar station to Calais-Ville Station where we would need to catch a bus to the Ferry Station. We were on the 4th or 5th bus that left the Station and when we arrived at the ferry station it was pandemonium. The line was going out of the building and there were about 2 or 3 people selling ticket to about 300 people. Each person had to have their passport entered and checked due to international law.

Max was doing fine up until this point which was about 4-5 hours into the trip. We were frantic to get on the ferry which we heard was leaving at 8:00. Finally a woman who noticed that Max was starting to wear thin (he was starting to cry and fuss) mentioned to Jennifer if this was a normal station they would let the baby go first and that Jen should go to the front of the “mob”. Thankfully Jennifer did and we received our tickets, but then we had to go through the security checkpoint which we had already done in Paris and then go through a british passport check! You would think that we would be getting on the ferry right away, but no! We had to take a bus to the ferry dock. The ferry was a welcome sight with it’s relaxed air. Max was able to finally get out of his carrier and run around and made friends with little girl from Singapore. They had a lot of fun!

Max did extremely well during the whole travel and was making friends left and right. When he started to fuss someone would jump in and start talking to him or playing with him to distract him. You must remember that we had Max, his stroller and five bags. Some places had elevators, others did not, others had broken elevators and most of them had just stairs! The French were completely unprepared for an emergency situation like this and many passengers were left scrambling to find out information. We found an nice woman name Emily who spoke both French and English and latched on to her for info. Also along our journey we met Rob and Warren who were full of information and helped us with our bags a lot going up and down stairs.

Once across the channel, which was actually a nice voyage, the craziness started up all over again, but I have to say the British were much more prepared for all of us! The were very helpful and assistive. Once we landed in Dover they had busses which were to take us to the Customs terminal. This consisted of driving all of us to a building and literally walking through it. Nothing happened there! On the other side we reboarded the busses and were taken to the Dover train station. At the station we had to wait for an hour for a local train to pick us up! The train took us to a town called Ashford where we caught another Eurostar train into London. Luckily once in London our hotel was a few blocks away. We were a little disheveled at this point and lost our bearings on directions. One of our friends that we had made, Rob saw us from his taxi and had the driver take us to the front door!

A 2 hour trip took 10 hours. Four trains, 4 busses, 1 ferry, and a taxi, but lots of walking too!