Killing time in London
We slept till 0900 today and had a late breakfast at our budget London hotel today. We have a flight from London Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle at 1500 today, purchased at a very cheap price on British Airways. That means we have a few hours to kill before heading to the airport.
We packed up and stored our bags at reception before walking to Kensington Park and Palace, then through to Bayswater. There, we saw a nice mix of restaurants. The yumcha was popular with queues out the door. We killed some time with a cuppa tea at McDonald’s when it started drizzling before walking back to the hotel. We had successfully killed about 1h30.
Flying to Paris
Once we got to the airport by tube, check-in was smooth and swift. But security getting to airside was absolute bedlam, partly due to the narrow layout of the area. There appears to be no exit passport control even for intercontinental passengers.
The 1h05 (including ground time) flight on a British Airways Airbus A319 came complete with a sandwich and a comprehensive bar service. I was impressed. But I suppose that’s why they needed five cabin crew for it whereas other airlines only operate with four for the larger A320.
Landing at 1705, our plane docked at one of the several satellite buildings that are connected by tunnels to the cake-tin that is Terminal 1. The place looked very worn and looks like preparations are being made for refurbishment.
Hotel hassles
From Terminal 1, we had to take bus to Terminal 2 to take a train to the city. It was a long hike just to get out from the plane to the train! [Edit: Paris’ Beauvais Airport, technically outside of Paris, is so much simpler. It was only steps from the plane to the bus and less than an hour later, we were in the centre of Paris!]
After the train ride, we changed to the metro at Gare du Nord. We needed two changes on the metro to get to our station, Saint Georges. Then we realised the station was closed and we had to overshoot and backtrack on foot, uphill.
We finally got to the Emeraude Hotel de Espagne. There was a problem with the room they had available for us. It had a hot water problem. The young Chinese receptionist (probably a high school boy) seemed oblivious to the inconvenience this was causing. There seemed to be no solution forthcoming, eg. putting us in another room for which the guests haven’t arrived. Perhaps he was expecting us to simply walk away and find a place somewhere else. It was getting late and finally Kim lost his temper. The boy finally said he would book us into another hotel and get us there by taxi, paid for by them.
The taxi finally arrived and the boy paid the EUR15 to the driver. An hour after we had arrived at this hotel, we departed to Hotel Axel Opera rather nearby.
We were pleased that we weren’t homeless for the night and had a simple dinner in a Chinese restaurant before settling in for our first night in Paris together. It had not been a nice start to a city that I love. What should have been an easy day turned out to be rather difficult, with one hassle after another.