Week 10: France and England.

We're in Saint-Chéron this week until Friday. Overall a pretty quiet week for us. Then it's travel madness for a few days.

Sunday

Rest day. We stayed in the house and watched the rain.

Monday

Katharine and the kids were off to Disneyland Paris. I'd sooner have a root canal so I dropped them off in the morning and picked them up when the parks closed. It was nice to have a quiet day to get some work done.

Tuesday

Home with school and work.

Wednesday

I had a meeting with a client in Paris, so I took the train in to have lunch. The rest of the family stayed home and caught up on school.

Thursday

The calm before the storm. We had three days of travel ahead of us for our next destination. Time to catch up on laundry, eat all the food that was in the house, and rest up for the craziness.

Friday

It begins. We packed the car Friday morning and left our Airbnb at 9:00am. It was such a great place! We were sad to leave this one.

First stop was the Hilton in La Défense. I'm dropping Katharine and the kids off here and taking our car all the way back to Hannover, Germany. Driving in Paris is no fun.

I left the hotel at 10:36am. I crossed the border in to Belgium at 11:56am, The Netherlands at 1:37pm and Germany at 2:30pm. I pulled in to the airport at 7:12pm. I stopped once for fuel and restroom just outside Hannover. I'll miss driving on the autobahn.

I took the train back in to the city center to catch a bus right back to Paris. One last stop at Bavarium for schnitzel and beer. I left Hannover at 10:35 on a Flixbus headed for Paris.

I woke up a few times in the middle of the night. I'm not sure what happened, but the bus was taking a bunch of random small roads with roundabouts. I think the motorway was closed. At 2:22am we pulled in to a rest stop. The smokers got off for a cigarette and we were back on the road soon after.

Saturday

We arrived at Paris Bercy bus station at 8:35am, one hour behind schedule. I hopped on the train to the hotel to meet the family, grab a shower, and get some breakfast.

From the hotel we were headed to Gare du Nord to take the Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel in to London. Dragging our bags and backpacks through four train stations was no fun but we finally made it.

Gare du Nord was a bit of a challenge to navigate. We couldn't find the Eurostar terminal right away. Eventually we made it up the stairs and found the check-in. Taking the train was a lot like arriving at the airport. Ticket checks, passport checks, security and baggage screening, and finally waiting in the terminal.

Around 12:50pm, we loaded on the train. We left the station at 1:15pm headed for London.

We arrived at St. Pancras at 2:40pm and changed time zones. At St. Pancras, we took an Uber to our rental car facility near Heathrow.

At 4:55pm we were on the road. Our final destination is a little town outside Edinburgh, Scotland called Inverkiething. It's been a long day already so we're making a pit stop in Leicester tonight. We arrived at the hotel in Leicester around 8pm.

Until next week!