St Pancras station, London

In November 1994, train travel all the way to Paris and Brussels from London was made possible by the opening of the Euro tunnel and the operation of Eurostar. Eurostar is the high speed train that takes people from London to and from Paris and Brussels in less than 3 hours. I made my first Eurostar trip in December 1999, I spent a few days at Christmas with family in London and decided to spend 2 days in Paris also. It was my first time in Paris. I was both scared and excited. I loved Eurostar even then, the old station was at Waterloo. I think they moved to St Pancras 2 years ago. I've been on Eurostar many times since my first trip but this was the first time at St Pancras. I love this station. St Pancras is also the name of the tube station stop and King's Cross train station. It is an extremely busy place. One can get easily overwhelmed at seeing the crowds. St Pancras is a beautifully refurbished station. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the beautiful exterior. I think it was a church before.

We saw huge groups of British housewives going to Paris and Brussels.

Here we are, getting ready to board, one train is going to Brussels, the other to Paris. We were on the Brussels train which also stops at Lille, France. Lille was our stop. I've been to Brussels on this train a few years ago. Just before we pulled off the station, both Sophie and I ran out to take these pictures.

I'm ready to take off now. It goes through the chunnel (the tunnel under the English channel) for about 20 minutes and you emerge on the other side either in England or in France. It is one of the most amazing engineering feat ever. I saw a documentary on TV last night of the astronauts repairing the Hubble telescope in Space. Wow. That's another amazing engineering feat. The chunnel took 15 years and 20 billion dollars to complete. Have you been there yet? A second class ticket doesn't cost that much. We stayed at a fleapit hostels just minutes away from St Pancras. Rooms are expensive in London. We shared a dorm room with 10 other girls. It was only for one night. We arrived the day before and here we are, the next day on the next leg of our trip.... Lille, France!

The train actually stopped at Gare Lille Europe which was a bigger station but it is a 5 minutes walk to the old station at Gare Lille Flandres. We didn't have any hotel reservation but there are many hotels just in front of Gare Lille Flandres. We found one for 60 euros double occupancy with en suite bathroom.