Jim & Happy : London/Paris

We met up with Laurel on Wednesday. It was so nice to see her, a touch surreal. We drove to Henley-on-Thames for lunch and a walk around the high street and caught up on all the gos from home.

Thursday we caught the train to London for a day of sight seeing. We decided on another one of those double-decker bus tours we love so much. They are a good way to see the major sights. Lucky for us the rain had stopped by the time we boarded the bus. The tickets are valid for 24hours and you can get on and off as many times as you like. There is an art to getting settled with your map flying in the wind, untangling the earphones and trying to select the correct language channel, the situation is quite funny really. It also included a short cruise up The Thames. We included a ticket to London Tower. Our guide/yeoman was well informed and told entertaining tongue in cheek jokes.

Saturday morning we set off early for Dover. It was a wet and rainy 2-hour drive from Maidenhead. We were booked on the 11.30 ferry to Calais. The crossing was an hour and a half - a slight swell.

Jim was anxious about driving on the other side of the road but he was amazing, he did really well. 2.5 hours from Calais we arrived at the car park (45mins outside of Paris). Jim admitted to feeling like he was having an anxiety attack, he said he felt like his heart was thumping out of his chest while he was driving.

We left the car in the car park and caught the shuttle bus (10mins) to the airport and will pick it up tomorrow morning and drive onto Avignon. That will be a long day of driving (6hrs). Leaving the car outside of Paris and catching a train in from the airport was the safer option than driving in Paris (proper).

One stop before our destination the train stopped due to a technical error. Luckily, the doors opened. Imagine being stuck on a train with the doors locked. Panic!!!!!! After 15 minutes and a few announcements in French we realized the train was not going to move so we followed everyone else and got off. You can just imagine the scene with a full train load of passengers trying to push onto the next incoming train. We decided to wait for the next train – it felt much safer and had loads of space.