May 13, Adventure awaits..

Today, our train to go back to St. Pancras was scheduled to leave for 12:13pm. For once, we thought, "Yess! We have lots of time!" - we could sleep in for a little bit, have a quick breakfast and leave for Gare du Nord (our train station) with no stress. We woke up, looked for a patisserie/boulangerie (a place we've been wanting to eat at since we got to Paris), but of course all of them were closed because it was a Sunday. We settled for a breakfast buffet at the hotel. Once we were done, we headed up to our room to get things completely settled and packed to leave. But what did we end up doing back at the room? Dance, of course! Dancing and jumping on the bed like crazy people, to songs that would forever remind us of our trip. Dancing.. and dancing.. and ohh but one more song! Dancing.. still dancing.. and ohh but one more picture! Still dancing.. Then realizing the time and thinking "Oh shit, we're screwed". We had less than an hour to get on our Eurostar train en route to London.

We quickly rushed to front desk, checked out, and ran as fast as we could to our metro station. We got on the train, and had to switch to another metro station, where we encountered complications. So apparently, the train that runs on that RER line doesn't go to Gare du Nord at all on Sundays (even though it's CLEARLY on the RER map). Instead, it goes to Gare de l'Est. A nice lady suggested that we go to Gare de l'Est since it's only a five minute walk away from Gare du Nord. We got onto the train and of course when the train only had one more stop to go, there was a delay. The train kept stopping on the middle of the tracks and it was already noon. The agony of waiting was so hard to bear!! I was sending up prayers like craaaazy, just hoping that things would work out. We came to the point where we just needed to accept that we were going to miss our train. But we thought that in case of a delay with Eurostar, we should still try to run for it. So we finally arrived at Gare de l'Est by 12:07. We dashed out of the train with our suitcases, zoomed past everyone, then stopped because we realized that we had no idea where were going. I asked a gentleman if he could point us in the right direction of Gare du Nord to which he said he could take us there himself, under the condition that he wasn't going to run. Screw that! Our train was going to depart in five minutes! He told us where to go, so we ran as fast as we could, yet again taking our heavy luggage up and down staircases (but we were very fortunate that some people actually tried to help us carry our stuff up the stairs). Almost at the entrance of Gare du Nord, I turned around to see if the girls were caught up but when I looked back, I saw the same guy that gave us directions. Til this day, I'm wondering if he did end up running after us to make sure we got to the right place. Whatever the case, we were very thankful. But as expected, we arrived at Gare du Nord at 12:16, with our Eurostar train long gone from its platform.

At this point, we were scared of how much it would cost us to get onto the next train to St. Pancras. When booking these train tickets prior to this trip, the 12:13 train was the cheapest. Any train departing later costed well over $100. We were also scared about when the next scheduled train would be; it was a Sunday, after all. We were doubting if we were going to still be able to pull through with our day plans in London. We went to the Eurostar helpdesk where the lady let us get onto the next train for free (accompanied by a warning), and the next train was to leave in just an hour! No additional fee, and we'd only be an hour late. Luck? I think not! Someone was definitely looking after us up there. Immense relief. IMMENSE, I tell you!! We got onto the train with smiles on our faces. I was so happy and pumped about the whole situation that I danced on the train for literally about half an hour straight in my seat. Definitely an experience I will never forget. Definitely an experience I will learn from!

Ps. Surprisingly, Pariens won the Nice-People Award this time around.