2013 Volleyball Tour Blog Tour #3 – Day 5 London to Paris.

2013 Volleyball Tour Blog Tour #3  – Day 4 London to Paris.

Today is a travel day… we are leaving London and going to Paris.  We had an easy morning for breakfast.  We scheduled two transfers on a private motor coach to go to St. Pancras station.  We packed our bags the night before so we were ready to head out the door after breakfast.  We were only about 10 minutes from the St. Pancras International train station and it was a quick motor coach ride.  We arrived to the train station about 1 hour before our departure, similar to what we do for an airline flight.  We had our luggage screened, and proceeded to the passport control and got another stamp for our passports, and then went into the secure area to wait for our boarding announcement.  I have to admit we were not too smooth in our boarding process… The train car has two entrances… and we all lined up at ONE…. thus taking longer….  It seemed like all of the other cars were already loaded… and we still had people on the boarding platform.  After a few minutes time … everyone was on board… and shortly after that the train started to move.. silently and smoothly.

In about 30 minutes and without and special announcement… we were UNDER THE ENGLISH CHANNEL…. Traveling at about?? 100 miles per hour…. And in 28 minutes we were back into the sun light and into FRANCE.  Once we entered France… the train went even faster…. Up to 200 miles per hour.. The cars and trucks on the freeway next to us looked like they were standing still…. Really … standing still.  In no time at all we were pulling into the Gare du Nord train station, our final stop of our train ride.  The train station is one of those big old … scary ones that you see in the old movies…. Our hotel was … right across the street.  The check in

took only about 5 minutes which was amazing considering the number of people that we had to check in.  That was a good thing because we had only about 1 ½ hour before we had to depart to go to the opening ceremonies of the 3 day volleyball tournament.   The local host Chaufik had given us an English speaking escort us to the City Hall of the 19^th district where the ceremonies were being held.  The city hall was a huge old building with large chandeliers and painted murals on the walls and ceilings.  There were introductions (in French, English, and Italian)  the tournament director said something about the tournament and the spirit of friendship, and how the teams were selected.  It sounds like

some of the French teams are ALL STAR Teams from Paris and other cities plus the Tunisia U20 NATIONAL TEAM…. We may have our work cut out for us… playing these star teams.

Following the introductions we had a little snack with our opponents, told them we would see them tomorrow… and then we went to watch the opening rounds of play featuring the local host team and the French all star team….. The all star team was very powerful and very SELECT….. and won the match easily…. Following the match we took the metro back to our hotel and went to dinner.

Curfew was 11:30pm everyone was home safe and sound.

Tomorrow is the tournament.