Today is a travel day we are leaving London and going to Paris. We had an easy morning and did not h

Today is a travel day we are leaving London and going to Paris. We had an easy morning and did not have any set time to have breakfast. Most of us slept in until about 9am and went down to breakfast. We pack our bags the night before so we were ready to head out the door after breakfast. We were only about 10 minutes from the St. Pancras International train station but the weather was cold, windy, and rainy we decided to take a bus. Fortunately we were the only ones on the bus because airline and tickets and last minute our luggage took up most of the space. We arrive to the train station about 2 hours before our departure, similar to what we do for an airline flight. Herding around 35 people is not as easy as moving 1-2, everything takes a little more time. We had our luggage screened, and proceeded to the passport control and got another stamp for our passports, and then went into the secure area to wait for our boarding announcement. I have to admit we were not too smooth in our boarding process The train car has two entrances and we all lined up at ONE . thus taking longer airline and tickets and last minute . It seemed like all of the other cars were already loaded and we still had people on the boarding platform. After a few minutes time everyone was on board and shortly after that the train started to move.. silently and smoothly.
In about 30 minutes and without airline and tickets and last minute and special announcement we were UNDER THE ENGLISH CHANNEL . Traveling at about?? 100 miles per hour . And in 28 minutes we were back into the sun light and into FRANCE. Once we entered airline and tickets and last minute France the train went even faster . Up to 200 miles per hour.. The cars and trucks on the freeway airline and tickets and last minute next to us looked like they were standing still . Really standing still. In no time at all we were pulling into the Gare du Nord train station, our final stop of our train ride. The train station is one of those big old scary ones that you see in the old movies . Our hotel was right across the street. The check in took only about 5 minutes which was amazing considering the number of people that we had to check in. That was a good thing because we had to quickly depart to go to the opening ceremonies of the 2 day volleyball tournament. The local host Chaufik had his brother Mohamed escort us to the City Hall of the 19 th district where the ceremonies airline and tickets and last minute were being held. The city hall was a huge old building with large chandeliers and painted murals on the walls and ceilings. There were introductions (in both French and English) and each coach said a little something about the tournament and the spirit of friendship, and how the teams were selected. It sounds like some of the French teams are ALL STAR Teams from Paris and other cities . We may have our work cut out for us playing the all star teams.