Day 8: Waking up at the crack of ten

We slept in until just after 10am this morning. That wasn’t the plan, mind you. Sherri’s phone ran out of battery during the night. Oh, sweet blissful accidents. This put us in a bit of a pinch, though, as we needed to be at the London International train station for a 12:24pm train to Paris (pre-purchased tickets, of course!). But we know how to double-time it when necessary. We travel well as a family together (Team Hummel!), and we each have our own unique roles that we’ve established during our travels, as well as a showering order and a morning routine. On the day we’re leaving a place, we pack everything the night before and put out our clothes for the next day. This helped us get ready quickly and get out of the door by 11. We will miss our awesome London apartment!

Here's how you MacGyver a light when you keep hitting your head...

We made it through security and into our seats in plenty of time. We were excited, because we were about to take a train the Channel Tunnel, or the “Chunnel.” The Chunnel is a 30-mile tunnel that goes under the English Channel and connects the UK to France. An amazing feat of engineering, this tunnel goes almost 400 feet below sea level and the train goes 99 miles an hour. And, like most engineering projects, it was over time and (massively) over budget. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell during the ride that you are going through the Chunnel. It was a lot more uneventful than we had hoped. I’m not sure what I was picturing…..a glass-ceiling train with dolphins and squid swimming above?

When we arrived in Paris, we were met with a lot of people moving *very* fast! Hey people in Paris, we are on vacation, slow your roll!  We got to our place very easily, and although the instructions were a bit sketchy (“go to the grocery store around the corner, ask the man for an envelope with your name on it, and there will be keys and a secret code inside…”), we were able to finally drop our luggage off at our place. We are two for two on good AirBnb selections now….and in fact, our Paris apartment has a view of the Eiffel Tower! Check this out:

What, you can't see that?? It's right here:

After dropping our stuff, we headed to dinner. We are averaging 1.5 meals a day on travel days, so we were pretty hungry at this point. We took the Metro to within walking distance of the Eiffel Tower and found a really fantastic restaurant about a half mile away. It was one of the best meals we’ve had on this trip so far, if not *the* best. 

Remember, beer is required with dinner!

Awww, this really is the city of love!

After dinner we headed to the Eiffel Tower. There are definitely more tourists in Paris than in London. There are three ways to get to the highest point of the Eiffel Tower: 1) take the elevator lift from the bottom to the top 2) climb the stairs to the first level and then take the elevator lift to the top, 3) climb the stairs to the second level and then take the elevator lift to the top.  After our caloric dinner, it was a unanimous decision to go with #3. 670 steps all the way to the second level…. even more than St. Paul’s Cathedral! And, because there are so many tourists, the stairs were faster than the elevator lift (and cheaper!). We got to the top right as the sun was going down. It was a gorgeous night and I got the chance to kiss my sweetie and watch the sun go down.

Miniature Town!

Miniature Town again! It's only a matter of time before Sherri shuts this whole thing down...

Miniature Town Part III

Get a room!

You must be this tall to be a tower.

After we got back down to the bottom, we camped out on the lawn and watched the Light Show. It was really fantastic!

We trudged our way back home after another very full day and our heads hit the pillow at about 1am. Whew! 

On the walk back to the apartment. Lots of non-sexy parts of the vacation, and the walks to and fro are just one of them.