12th May

London - Paris

We eagerly awaited the arrival of the post. Eventually at 10 o'clock it arrived. Jan went through it and as she went through the pile it looked less and less likely to be there, but the last letter in the pile was my ticket! What a relief! So about 3 hours later than we had planned we set off for France.
The channel crossing was a very bumpy ride. Once we got to Calais we were advised by some French women that it would be quicker if we walked to the train station instead of waiting for the bus. I think that they were lying! When we eventually got to the train station we had to get on a non direct service with a 2 hour wait in Lille.
We arrived in Paris at 11:30 pm. We then headed to the Peace and Love Hostel (The Lonley planet desvribes it as chronically crowded, so the fack that we hadn't made a reservation was quite a big one!), it was competelly full, and so were the next two hostels that we tried. So at 1 am we checked into a hotel a very expensive decision! A double room cost us 90 euros! So Paris got off to a very bad start!