Day 268 - Waiting for Eurostar

Today we took the Eurostar back to the UK, where we'll be for the final few weeks of our trip. Because our train wasn't scheduled to leave until after 3 p.m., we had some time in the morning to do a bit more roaming around Montparnasse. We decided to take a walk through the historic Montparnasse cemetery. When it was created from three farms in 1824, this cemetery was on the outskirts of Paris. For health reasons, Paris had banned any new cemeteries after the collapse at the the Cimetière des Innocents which lead to the building of the catacombs, as discussed in yesterday's blog.

Many of France's intellectual and artistic elite are buried here, such as:

• Charles Baudelaire, poet
  

• Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher (existentialism

With Peter Sellers in
"The Mouse that Roared"

• Jean Seberg, American Actress 

Perhaps the most interesting burial to Phil and me was that of Nobel prize-winning playwright Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot). Although born and educated in Ireland, Beckett lived most of his adult life in Paris. When the Germans occupied France, Beckett joined the French Resistance as a courier. He was nearly caught several times, and at one time, he had to flee to a small village called Roussillon. Some have said that it is this journey that provides the inspiration for the writing of Waiting for Godot.

But we had our own journey to complete (we need to get out of Paris before the World Cup final!). We arrived at Gare du Nord station two hours ahead of our scheduled train time, so had a nice lunch nearby at a small restaurant. However, after the arduous task of snaking through the line for ticket inspection, French customs and then UK customs, while waiting to board it was announced that someone had left a package at check-in, and so boarding couldn't commence until security sorted that out (or ate what was probably the sandwich someone left). 

Once on board, the train (for reasons left unexplained) could only go about half of its normal speed for most of the journey. Then, to complicate matters a bit more, the train could not stop at Ashford International; it had to go on to Ebbsfleet, which is just outside of London, and there Eurostar staff put us on a train back to Ashford where the train we were on could stop. Why the Eurostar itself  couldn't stop there remains a mystery.

So, we arrived in Ashford about 2 hours behind schedule, but then we had nowhere to be at any specific time, so all good. We decided to take a bus the remainder of the way to our destination for the next two weeks: a cottage in Hythe, Kent. It takes about 25 minutes to drive the distance, but we selected a bus that would take us through many of the surrounding villages. Very pretty. It felt great to be back in England and smell the fresh country air.