Jul 15,
When you travel you are bound to experience the good, the bad, and the ugly. And today, as we were leaving Paris, we got to experience some of the ugly.
We got to the station to take the train to London with plenty of time. There was one waiting line for the 12:13 train (ours) and one for the 1:13 one. We got in our line only to have chaos ensue a few minutes later. Because they had too many people in the area they started to create multiple parallel lines, and started to mix people from both trains. And because of their lack of organization (and common sense) all the other lines for our train (which formed after ours) went ahead of us and we ended up being some of the last ones. Even more infuriating, before our waiting line was even finished they started to let people from the 1:13 train AHEAD of us. There was a group of literally about 30 exchange students- for the later train - that went ahead of us. When we pointed out that the people going in front of us were in the later train, and we had very limited time to make it to ours, we were basically told to wait our turn. And may I mention that there were only a couple of people checking passports, and they were taking their sweet old time? And I neglected to mention that part of the process required you to scan your printed ticket but Bella’s didn’t work for some reason. So that required us to get help, and fall further behind.
By the time we finally made it past the French and UK Customs (needed thanks to Brexit) we had to ask people to please let us go ahead of them through security, so we didn’t miss our train.
After all that mess we ended up making it to the train after 12:13, and we left even a few minutes later as they waited for the rest of the passengers.
When we arrived in London we had no issues making it to the rental apartment, but once we did we found another surprise as it doesn’t have AC, when the listing clearly indicated it did and that is the reason we chose it. After complaining to both the host and Airbnb, and evaluating our options, we felt like the least bad immediate option was to stay at least the night and give the host the opportunity to bring in the “portable AC units” she said she could bring. They are not here yet, so they better show up tomorrow. While AC or not would not normally be an issue in England, they will also be impacted by the heat wave. And a hot apartment means no good sleep, which means a cranky and tired crowd for the day, and therefore a waste of vacation days. So let’s hope for the best.
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