When I used to buy the
British Rail Timetable in the seventies it always came with an
International section and I used to look though it in hope that one
day I'd be able travel abroad on some the exotic sounding trains: the
Orient Express, the Rome Express, etc.. I remember seeing the coaches
in London Victoria for the Night Ferry train to Paris (the only
through train between the two capitals before the Channel Tunnel
opened) and hearing about the Golden Arrow all-Pullman day service to
Paris. When I first visited Brugge by train via the Dover-Oostende
jetfoil I was excited to see that the train next to mine at Oostende
station was going to Moscow – and that was still in the days of the
Soviet Union.
Our Eurostar train at Marseille St Charles, being prepared for its journey back to London |
We had a holiday booked
to Switzerland at the end of the summer, but that was cancelled by
the tour operator and I decided to fill the time instead with a trip
to the South of France on the direct Eurostar to Marseille. It was to
be an exploration, a tour, and we would move about and see several
places but with no real agenda so that we could also relax, for we
needed a rest. The week was the last of the summer timetable with
daily trains, so we had some choice of when to travel, and having
looked at what we'd like to do I rang Great Rail Journeys to arrange
it for us, for they offer independent holidays as well as their own
packages and they'd given me a discount voucher in compensation for
the cancellation of the Swiss tour. I could also trust them to find
good hotels and good prices on train tickets. Slightly nail-biting,
the tickets are sent only ten days before departure and meanwhile we
bought our Euro currency (at greatly inflated price just after the
referendum result shook the financial world) and checked our
passports and insurance. A couple of short breaks in England meant
that I was not just pacing the floor while waiting for the day to
dawn!
So … on a Sunday
afternoon we made our way to Stamford station. It was a slightly
awkward start because the line between Stamford and Peterborough was
closed for maintenance, but a good coach service was laid on and its
timetable published so it did not affect us a great deal and when we
arrived at Peterborough we went straight to a train to London and
took our seats in First Class – a huge advantage of booking through
a tour operator was that we had fully-flexible first class tickets at
an affordable price which we could never have booked ourselves. We
had to carry our itinerary with us so that we could prove we were on
an inclusive tour if we were asked, although we never were. The usual
Sunday tea with sandwiches and cake was served on the train to London.
The Eurostar leaves
London at 07:19 in the morning, so we spent the first night of the
tour in London. I had asked for good hotels, and our room at the
Radisson Edwardian Grafton exceeded all our expectations: it was a
pity we were only staying one night! Up early in the morning we were
given take-away coffee and a muesli bar as we were too early for
breakfast, although London was already waking up as we walked along
Euston Road to St Pancras International to check in – we knew that
there would be a proper breakfast on the train. The usual procedure
at St Pancras: insert ticket in gateway, put luggage on conveyor
along with pocket contents for searching, take it all back again,
show passport to both UK and French border officers (this time stare
at camera for an automated check of passport photo, too, with our EU
electronic passports – I wonder what will happen to those now) and
sit and wait for boarding to begin.
When we arrived on the platform I was delighted to see that our train was composed of one of the recently-refurbished Eurostar sets in a very smart white-and-dark-blue livery, and I looked forward to seeing how the interior would differ from the trains we had used before. Not only was it smarter, cleaner and more up-to-date in style, but there were handy new features such as USB sockets for charging our smartphones etc as well as standard UK and continental sockets and, handiest of all, free wireless internet (so our smartphones were well worth charging!). The train staff were dressed rather more informally than usual, in T shirts with seaside holiday symbols: this was clearly a train for the leisure market!
We had not been travelling long when the continental breakfast was served: fruit juice, croissant, optional yogurt and coffee, of course. These Eurostar trains are very fast indeed and as we ran beside the M2 and M20 through Kent we were more than twice as fast as anything on the motorways!
Cheers! Starting the wine while waiting for the main course |
The weather had been
gloomy most of the way, but began to be sunny by the time the train
stopped at Avignon. Our stop was the last, Marseille St Charles, and
donning our Panama hats and sunglasses we stepped off the train into
blazing sunshine with a brilliance and heat that were breathtaking.
This was to be our weather, with a small exception, for the rest of
the week, and we had packed on the assumption that it would be. The
train ride had been an exciting start to what would turn out to be a
wonderful holiday.
I'll be describing the rest of the week soon, and meanwhile all my Trip Advisor reviews are available via the link in the right-hand column, and my photographs are on my Flickr album.
Marseille is a very
hilly city and the first task on leaving the station was to carry our
baggage down the substantial flight of steps into the street below,
our hotel being on the quayside at the Vieux Port, a walk of about
fifteen minutes, plotting our way with maps downloaded to our
smartphones before we left home. Our hotel, the Grand Hotel Beauvau,
was extremely comfortable and our room overlooked the Vieux Port,
which is now a very busy marina full of yachts and still a fishing
port and the terminal for ferries and pleasure cruises out to the
islands. We checked in, took our cases to our room and went for a
walk along one side the Vieux Port, up to a park overlooking the
whole port and the old part of the town – we passed a soap museum
(yes, really) and discovered that soap is a significant part of the
history of the region, along with the famous Provence lavender which
scents much of it.
Back at the hotel we
repaired to the bar, again overlooking the marina, fell for the
advertised cocktail, and ordered a salad meal for supper. As we sat
looking out over the quayside a dramatic electric storm began, with
lightning spectacularly lighting up the sky and the hills and sea,
and the people on the quayside hurried for cover – handily the new
public artwork of a flat canopy with mirrored ceiling was right
outside, near the steps from the metro, and there was space under it
for everyone who wanted cover. And so to bed, and Tuesday is another
day!
I'll be describing the rest of the week soon, and meanwhile all my Trip Advisor reviews are available via the link in the right-hand column, and my photographs are on my Flickr album.