Day 1 - Well an evening trying to get to DLP!!
As a surprise, DH booked a weekend break at Holiday Inn for just the two of us - it was also a surpise for him because he clicked confirm when he was checking availability. So we ended up booking the last Eurostar out on Friday evening after work changing at Lille, arranging for grandparents to look after dd and then thinking about packing etc with less than a week to go. We dropped off dd at grandparents, got dropped at the underground station, and caught the tube with no waiting. Everything going well. No delays. Three stops away from Waterloo, tube slows down, eventually we pull into station. Signal fault, no prediction on how long delay would be. We used the help intercom, and get told there is a taxi rank outside the station. So, off we go to find a taxi - knowing that time is now running short, we only had about 50 minutes until the Eurostar was due to go. Outside the station hunt for taxi rank, get told by newspaper seller there is none. Try unsuccessfully to flag down a taxi. Then hunt for bus to go to Waterloo, knowing that bus would take over 20 minutes with no traffic. Nearly five minutes passed (seemed like an eternity) before we found the right bus. And then the traffic, even with bus lanes, I found myself crying on the bus because I knew it was a lost cause.
We got to Waterloo five minutes before the Eurostar was due to go, and there was no way that they would let us board. Thankfully we were not the only ones delayed, and the gentleman we saw was really helpful. He managed to arrange for us to go on a later train to Paris, and said that we would be able to get the RER because that ran through the night to DLP.
The train to Paris was busy, but we ended up with four seats between the two of us so we caught some shut eye - after a beer to calm nerves. Everything was looking better, until we tried to get the RER from Gare de Nord. A very "helpful" Frenchman, bought the tickets for us (without us asking) and then said that we owed him 86 Euros for them. This did not seem right to us, but he said he had bought them because we wanted tickets and they were no good to him. He then "volunteered" to take us to a cash machine to withdraw the money. We said that we would go ourselves, he started following us but then said that he would wait. We could not find any staff or police or any-one to help.
We thought we would see how much a taxi would cost, but there was a long queue so phoned the Holiday Inn who said about 90-100 Euros. So we ventured back into the station, down a different escalator to the RER and found a chart showing ticket prices, different machines and managed to get tickets for about 6.5 Euros each. We did not have long to wait for the train, but then discovered that there was not another train that evening to DLP only to Torcy. So we got to Torcy, so near, but as we discovered so far. At about 1.30am we learnt that Torcy does not have a taxi rank etc, and the night bus runs at 2.15am approximately to DLP. The only positive was that the driving wind kept the rain away!!
We got talking to a French couple who got off the same train and were waiting for the bus, they offered us a lift from Val D'Europe to the Holiday Inn as they said we would be very lucky to find a taxi from Chessy to the hotel at that time of the morning. So at about 3am we made it into the hotel room, and crashed out not long after.
As a surprise, DH booked a weekend break at Holiday Inn for just the two of us - it was also a surpise for him because he clicked confirm when he was checking availability. So we ended up booking the last Eurostar out on Friday evening after work changing at Lille, arranging for grandparents to look after dd and then thinking about packing etc with less than a week to go. We dropped off dd at grandparents, got dropped at the underground station, and caught the tube with no waiting. Everything going well. No delays. Three stops away from Waterloo, tube slows down, eventually we pull into station. Signal fault, no prediction on how long delay would be. We used the help intercom, and get told there is a taxi rank outside the station. So, off we go to find a taxi - knowing that time is now running short, we only had about 50 minutes until the Eurostar was due to go. Outside the station hunt for taxi rank, get told by newspaper seller there is none. Try unsuccessfully to flag down a taxi. Then hunt for bus to go to Waterloo, knowing that bus would take over 20 minutes with no traffic. Nearly five minutes passed (seemed like an eternity) before we found the right bus. And then the traffic, even with bus lanes, I found myself crying on the bus because I knew it was a lost cause.
We got to Waterloo five minutes before the Eurostar was due to go, and there was no way that they would let us board. Thankfully we were not the only ones delayed, and the gentleman we saw was really helpful. He managed to arrange for us to go on a later train to Paris, and said that we would be able to get the RER because that ran through the night to DLP.
The train to Paris was busy, but we ended up with four seats between the two of us so we caught some shut eye - after a beer to calm nerves. Everything was looking better, until we tried to get the RER from Gare de Nord. A very "helpful" Frenchman, bought the tickets for us (without us asking) and then said that we owed him 86 Euros for them. This did not seem right to us, but he said he had bought them because we wanted tickets and they were no good to him. He then "volunteered" to take us to a cash machine to withdraw the money. We said that we would go ourselves, he started following us but then said that he would wait. We could not find any staff or police or any-one to help.
We thought we would see how much a taxi would cost, but there was a long queue so phoned the Holiday Inn who said about 90-100 Euros. So we ventured back into the station, down a different escalator to the RER and found a chart showing ticket prices, different machines and managed to get tickets for about 6.5 Euros each. We did not have long to wait for the train, but then discovered that there was not another train that evening to DLP only to Torcy. So we got to Torcy, so near, but as we discovered so far. At about 1.30am we learnt that Torcy does not have a taxi rank etc, and the night bus runs at 2.15am approximately to DLP. The only positive was that the driving wind kept the rain away!!
We got talking to a French couple who got off the same train and were waiting for the bus, they offered us a lift from Val D'Europe to the Holiday Inn as they said we would be very lucky to find a taxi from Chessy to the hotel at that time of the morning. So at about 3am we made it into the hotel room, and crashed out not long after.
What a relief you didn't give any money to that conman.
Well done for not accept the chancer help in Gard du Nord 
