Summer Vacation: Day 11 - London to Paris

We got ourselves organized in the morning and said goodbye to everyone. Alvin drove us to King's Cross/St Pancras so we didn't need to do it on the bus or tube with our suitcases.

When we got out of the car, I showed Leighton the outside of St Pancras and explained the parts of Harry Potter that were filmed there.

Then I got him to read the name of the station on the wall here.  I asked him if King's Cross station rang a bell ... and then he remembered that it is where the kids get on the train to Hogwarts in Harry Potter.  He was pretty excited.

We started leading the kids through, and Leighton says to me, "Wouldn't it be cool if they made a Platform 9 3/4?!?!" right as we got to it!  Pretty fun!  The line was long though for getting pictures with the luggage cart so we just took this one of him near it instead.

And then into the gift shop we went, of course!  He found a Hedwig that he REALLY wanted, so he used the money Alvin had gifted him plus a little from us.

Then we went to M&S for lunch foods for the train.  And wine!  Train travel is the best!  Then we went outside to the market area.  There was SO MUCH amazing looking food.  We got a baguette and some delicious sausage, which the man selling it so kindly sliced up for me.  The kids had a couple fresh fruit smoothies.

We then checked into the Eurostar and awaited our journey to PARIS!  We were seated the four of us facing each other again.  We drank our wine and ate our lunch and enjoyed the journey.

After arriving at the train station in Paris, we quickly got a cab to head for our airbnb.  I had heard it could be a really long line for taxis with everyone getting off the Eurostar wanting one, but it was a non issue.  It was so fun to start driving by all the gorgeous buildings.  It seemed like every minute, either the cab driver or myself were showing the kids different things, including the Eiffel Tower since our apartment was so close.

We got settled into the airbnb (this was our first airbnb experience and it was a smooth check in and the place was as we expected and even bigger than I expected, actually).  We decided to walk to the grocery store to get a few necessities and find groceries for making dinner instead of going out.  Here we are in the courtyard of the apartment.

We were all pretty tired, so after a late dinner, we went to bed.

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Total walking: probably about 1 mile or 1.6km
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