The Eurostar really is the story of my life, England and France, France and England.
I remember the first time I took the eurostar with my sister, leaving my mum in France to go and visit our dad in England. we used to go to Heathrow wearing the UM bags around our necks, many a divorced multi national child with remember them
The worst trip ever was the one with me crying the whole way after breaking up with a guy I thought was the love of my life (very handsome, sexy, cool and charming French heart breaker)sat next to a 20 year old American, he didn’t even offer me a tissue. Nearly put me off Americans for life…A Frenchman broke my heart but a Frenchman would have consoled me. This was after one of the craziest few days of my life when I went to Biarritz with said French heartbreaker, definitely a blog post for another time.
Second worst trip, the time I got stuck on the train in the freezing cold for 9 hours with only water and some shortbread. The wait for a taxi is freezing gare du nord at 2 AM when we arrived was even worse. Finally got to my hotel at 4AM and couldn’t go to sleep as my feet was soooo cold.
The trip I took when I moved to London to go to university, it really was the beginning of the rest of my life with the biggest suitcase I could find. The Trip back from business meetings in Brussels when we got drunk on gin and tonic and were sat next to a dad and his 2 kids, it seemed the dad had clearly realised he didn’t like “mummies” at some point. The look on my colleague’s face when he spilt his drink on his trousers and started “helpfully” cleaning up, never seen anybody tell someone “don’t worry, REALLY don’t worry”

The Trip I took with my Granny when she asked for “a drink” at 9 AM and they would not give her anything stronger than orange juice.

The Eurostar is full of people off for romantic weekends, dirty weekends, groups of middle aged people who I am sure live in houses full of John Lewis furniture , the women wearing M&S clothes, the men dreading the whole thing (Paris equals shopping) and the fact you can’t get a good cup of tea or pint of bitter in Paris. They are always the ones having champagne in the morning.
The Japanaee tourists about to get severely disappointed when they get to Paris and realise everyone is rude and ripping them off.
My Favourite trip was when I was sat with an American family on their way to Paris. Their son ( he looked like the kid in Jerry McGuire) was asking them some questions about the train that they did not know the answer to. Back in the summer of 2002, I worked for Eurostar so I knew the answers to some of his questions and basically butted in to their conversation. The next 2 hours were some of the most entertaining and interesting hours of my life. I taught him some French words made his day as I was the first “adult” he had met who did not have a driving license (they were from Arizona), he really could not get his little genius of a head round that. I quickly realised this was not just any odd kid, a really genius. His mum ( well mom actually) told me I would make a great nanny and was grateful for the 2 hour break I had given her as apparently he asks questions all day every day). He even seemed to get what I was telling him about benchmark data as he wanted to know what the presentation I was working on was about. I wanted to be his friend forever, he was great. His mum wanted me to stay forever because I am great 🙂
I still think my best trip is yet to come , the one where I’m neither crying neither going to Paris for work.

In the meantime, here are some of my favourite Eurostar adverts