Saturday, August 27, 2005

From Paris to London under the sea


If you come to Paris, you might as well spend a couple of days (or even one day!) in London which is about 200 miles away. And if you do so I suggest you take the Eurostar, a very fast train that will take you there in about 2 hours 30 minutes. This has been made possible thanks to a tunnel (the Eurotunnel) that was built between France and England between 1987 and 1993. The first commercial service of the train started November 14, 1994 and since then about 70 million people have used it.

7 comments:

  1. Jeez, Eric, another thing I have never done! How much does a round-trip Paris-London on the Eurostar cost these days? Of course, I could always do this from Lille, which would take even less time, and make it slightly cheaper.

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  2. Wish we had a "USstar" between Boston and New-York! Our express train, the Acela, is a joke compared to the TGV.

    The Eurostar also goes to Brussel, right?

    JM-

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  3. I like you Eric love the railway...
    Craggles

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  4. Me neither, Elisabeth. Back in the days we had to take a Ferry or the infamous "overcraft" (spell?) over the Channel to get to England. I say "infamous" because very often, if the sea was rough, everybody on the boat would get totally sick ...

    The TGV (bullet train) on the other hand is a very cool way to travel fast from one point to another. Highly recommend it!

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  5. > Elisabeth. From Paris the cheapest is 35 euros round trip. Not bad. And From Lille I don't know, but it's easy to find out on www.eurostar.com

    >JM. LOL. Yes, I must say not everything works fine in France, but the train system is really excellent.

    > Craggles. A lot of Brits were very against the tunnel I recall, but now a lot of them seem to have changed their mind...

    > Tomate. Gee, do I remember these terrible times! One of my worst journey was actually on the Overcraft where I spent the whole time... well... contemplating my little courtesy paper bag! The normal ferry was nice though; kind of a cruise where you could start experiencing fine British cuisine...

    > Pare. Yes! But the people who financially invested in the project do not find it that awesome! (the stock price went from 20 euros (well 130 francs)in 1990 to 0,27 euro today...)

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  6. forgot to add, for jm:
    yes, the eurostar goes to brussels, except for brussels the name of the TGV bullet-train is "thalys".

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