Whilst a change of plans had allowed me to travel to Lyon today, it’d not given me enough time to take the full day off work. I had travelled down to London last night, and today I needed to work a half day from 07:00 until 11:00. My last minute change in plans to take the train to and from London unfortunately meant I’d need to carry my work laptop with me for the next few days in addition to my own I’d be using for backing up photographs. At least without a flight, and with a mostly empty suitcase, I could keep it in there to avoid having the extra weight on my shoulders.

When the time came, we made our way across London to St. Pancras International. As we wouldn’t be getting into Lyon until late, it’d work better to have a warm meal at midday and have something cold on the train journey. One of the nearby food places Carmen suggested was Leon, and due to the similarity in the name to where we were travelling to, I thought it’d be an amusing choice of place to eat.

I’ve only eaten there once before, and couldn’t remember what I’d tried previously. There were a few different choices that sounded worth trying, but I went with a Sicilian chicken rice box with meatballs, some fries, and a lemon and ginger tea. We then headed over to Sainsbury’s to get snacks for later.

I’d passed the gates for the Eurostar at St. Pancras so many times, but this was the first time I’d be using them. Checking in for the train journey included luggage checks and passport control, just as it would for a plane journey, in order to comply with UK law. The reason we’d decided to take the Eurostar instead of a plane was that it would be easier for Carmen to keep what she needed for the competition with her at all times.

The check in seemed very disorganised though. We joined the queue, and after several minutes the queue behind us had grown quickly, but we were told by staff to go to the front. When we got there we were told the two trains were now the same queue, and sent us to the back now the queue was much longer. Fortunately the queue had started moving quicker, but at 13:40 we were told there was a technical issue with the French border control system, and they’d be suspending operations for now whilst they fix it.

Due to an IT problem at border control, your train is delayed. It will now leave London St Pancras International at 15:34 and arrive in Lille-Europe at 17:56.

If you miss your onward connection in the UK or with one of our partners in France, Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany, you can travel on the next available train. Please speak to a member of staff to validate your ticket.

It took them until 14:05 to fix it, so not too bad. After scanning our tickets we then went through security, and then two passport checks: one for leaving the UK, and one for entering France when they also stamp your passport. The security check was easy enough, and I could leave everything inside my bags for this. The process took us until 14:35, and about ten minutes later they called us for boarding. Surprisingly despite them telling us we would leave late, it left the station on time.

Eurostar first started its daily service in May 1995, just over thirty years ago. It may have taken a long time for me to experience the Channel Tunnel - the longest underwater tunnel in the world, but the time had come. A large portion of the high-speed railway out of London to the coast seemed to be underground, so wasn’t really sure when we rescheduled Folkestone. The journey from London to Lille is surprisingly short though at around 82 minutes.

Early on in the journey, Carmen received a message from one of her dance friends who had already arrived in Lyon. Sadly someone who had been helping them had pickpocketed them, and had spent £1,000 before their cards could be frozen. It reinforced the importance of having things safely tucked away in zip-up pockets.

As we’d already gone through border control in London, it meant when we arrived in Lille we were off the train and into the general train station - keeping the freedom of movement inline with Schengen rules. There’s no direct train from London to Lyon at present, which meant in Lille we were switching to a local TGV train, but didn’t yet know where to go. Whilst we’d got around fifty minutes in the station, the platform for our next train would only be announced fifteen minutes before boarding.

We didn’t really want to leave the station, even though we’d got time. It was raining hard there, and the station roof was leaking in multiple places. Instead, we sat and waited, and whilst doing so we received an email to let us know that the catering car on this next train would be closed. There were a few food places in the station if we needed anything, but otherwise it was lucky we’d bought snacks in London.

When the time came, we boarded separate coaches as unfortunately we didn’t have allocated seats together. I hoped we’d be able to move seats once we got going.

For the next (almost) four hours I watched the French countryside zip past the windows on our way to Lyon. The rain had fortunately come to an end. After about two hours we’d passed Charles de Gaulle airport, which I felt would be the busiest stop. As Carmen still had a free seat next to her I walked through the coaches to reach her, and sat there. At the very next stop someone turned up for that seat, but they were kind enough to swap. It took a bit of work figuring it out, as whilst my French isn’t that bad, it is a struggle to translate the spoken tongue when it’s fast. Maybe when I was learning French at high school it would have been easier.

We arrived in Lyon just after 22:00, and headed downstairs into a mostly closed station. We followed the signs to the T4 tram stop at Gare Part-Dieu Vilette. It would be €2.30 for a single ticket, or €6.90 for a 24 hour one. The latter made sense as we’d have a few trips to do tomorrow so would likely break even if not make a saving.

It was a fair wait on the platform, and was fairly noisy for the time of night as well. A few stops down the line we got off the tram at Jet d’Eau, and then found our way to the AirBNB from there. Carmen’s dance teacher, Roswitha, would be staying with us and had arrived earlier in the day. This meant she’d already had the opportunity to check-in, but was now out in the town. She’d left the key for is in the lockbox though so we could get in. We got through the door at 22:30, after so much travelling.

About twenty minutes later we went out again so we could get some snacks from the only open convenience store that was about a ten minute walk away. There wasn’t much to choose from, but we got some cookies, some juice, and jam for €7.

Roswitha got back not long after us, having struggled to find her way back with some of the T4 not working and her phone having gone flat. It’d been a long day for us all.