London to Paris

Well its Tuesday morning and we got up early and packed up to travel to France.

But to review:

Long long long long flights to London. Spent 4 hours in LA and 10 hours more hours  to London.

We are so lucky!! The trip started with a fantastic flight via V Australia, our preferred carrier! One leg of the journey and two lounges later, we moved over to V Atlantic, a British service from Los Angeles to London. I understand that they are planning to up grade their services next year. I think we can be pretty proud of the way Aussies do things!

We were in the air for nearly thirty eight hours, but still managed to get lots of sleep, see a few movies and have some laughs with the staff and other passengers.

In particular, we met Scott and Sandy, who currently live bi-coastally in Los Angeles and New York, but are planning to open an eco spa/digital recording studio in New Zealand next year. Scott is teaching digital media at USC and is a music recording technical guy. Sandy is a student of life!! She had heaps of knowledge about living green, seed sharing and building organic/eco friendly homes.

As we were leaving Hervey Bay, Chris and I decided to book a mini-cab to meet us at Heathrow. What a good idea that turned out to be!! Khan was there to meet us, knew exactly how to get to our hotel, and was good company on the journey.

Three nights at the Wyndham Grand Chelsea Harbour….needless to say, we pretty much crashed the night we arrived. After that, however, we went pretty much non stop!

Pawel, the consciege, took a shine to us for some reason. We were leaving on our first outing, and it turned out that Chelsea had just won ‘The Cup’ (Okay, here I have to confess that my complete knowledge of this anecdotal; I know the words, not the game nor what it entails) and getting transit –public or taxis – was impossible. Pawel organised for the Hotel driver, Milton, to run us around in the hotels new Audi saloon. Pretty posh! We arrived at the National Theatre front door in style, and had the pure privilege of meeting one of the nicest people you could ever hope to know. Milton migrated from Nigeria ten years ago, and loves all that Britain has offered him since his arrival.

Chris was in seventh heaven at the National Theatre! We commenced the experience by lining up for ‘day tickets’. A fellow from New York was in front of us in the queue, and I thought he was going o snap two little old ladies like dry twigs when he assumed they we trying to get in front of him in line! We went on the backstage tour, and I was astonished to learn that they build all their sets onsite in downtown London! We saw a period piece called London Assurance that was quite good, and stared Mrs. Dursley from the Harry Potter movies.

Since then, we have pretty much been walking. London is a fabulous city to see by foot. There is something wonderful everywhere you turn. People have been kind and helpful. In short, the whole experience to date has been fantastic!

As I write, we are sitting on the Eurostar, about 30 minutes outside of Paris Nord. I am so excited that I am slightly nauseous. We’ve been listening to music and enjoying the countryside. It is hard to believe that the Paris Adventure is beginning!