Tips for Riding the Eurostar Train from London to Paris
If you are planning to take a trip to Europe and go from London to Paris, then in all likelihood you will be riding on the Eurostar train for this journey. When I took this trip, I had all kinds of questions about train travel in Europe and about this specific train, and I spent months of research trying to find out specific information. Hopefully these tips will make your experience an easier one.
1. The first thing you will need to know is how to book tickets to ride on the Eurostar. The best site to use is raileurope.com . I found the best prices on this site, as well as other useful information such as schedules. Raileurope also has an 800 number you can call for additional assistance. If you go to the raileurope site, on the left hand side of the home page, there will be a place you can click on for eurostar tickets. This will take you to a page where you can put in the dates you wish to travel, and it will pull up options for ticket prices. If you really don’t want a lot of detailed information, you could just purchase your ticket here and be done with it. But I am guessing, like me, you will have many more questions.
The Eurostar Train is a train that goes either from London to Paris on London to Brussels, Belgium. It is an incredibly advanced train, and it travels faster than many other trains in Europe. The London to Paris option, discussed here, takes about 2 hours and 35 minutes. The Eurostar goes underneath of the English channel through the Chunnel, a tunnel that was actually built underneath of the water, through the rock below. When I initially heard of the Chunnel, I assumed that you would be going right through the water, but you are actually underneath it in a layer of rock. This made me feel safer, because I had visions of a leak springing in the chunnel or something else going awry!
When you book a ticket on the Eurostar, you can either book a one-way or round-trip ticket. Included in the fare is the ticket itself, plus a seat reservation. This is a new concept that you will need to grasp if traveling by train in Europe. If you have a ticket on a train, this doesn’t mean you necessarily have a seat. If you purchase a rail pass for Germany, for example, you will be able to ride the trains, but won’t have a reserved seat. The seat reservations themselves generally cost about $10-$20 extra for each segment of a trip. If you are traveling from Basel to Frankfurt, and then switching trains and going from Frankfurt to Berlin, it would cost about $11 for each of the two segments, just for the seat reservation. With the Eurostar ticket, you are getting a seat reservation with the ticket. This means you will have a designated seat such as Car 5, seat 62. (In general, I found that except for the Eurostar, it wasn’t very important in France, Germany or Switzerland to have a seat reservation because you could generally find a seat on the train. I will say that when traveling to a mountain top in Switzerland such as the Jungfraujoch, the trains were pretty crowded and seats were hard to come by.)
2. When purchasing the ticket, you will also have your choice of class. You can choose business class, first (also called leisure select), or second class. It costs a good bit more to buy a first class ticket, but the extra leg room, seats themselves, and the meal served at your seat make it worth the difference in price. It cost us about $150 one way for a first class ticket from London to Paris. Second class seats were about $50 less.
The second class ticket gives you just the seat reservation and ticket itself. You will also be assigned one of the second class cars. In second class, the seats are a little closer together, so you will feel more like you are on an airplane than if you sit in first or business class. In second class, you will also be seated in rows like you are in an airplane. There will not be a table in front of you for eating most likely, so you would have to eat food on your lap or go to the bar car. The bar car is very interesting. There is a counter area, where you order food. They serve sandwiches, salads, desserts, snack items, and drinks. They do have some hot sandwiches, and there is a decent selection. The only drawback is that you have to stand to eat in the bar car. There are tables, but they are higher than normal tables and you stand at them to eat your food. You can take the food you purchase back to your seat.
3. If you sit in first class or business class, you will be served a meal at your seat. This is nice! The meal varies depending on the time of day. Before 11 am, you are served breakfast. From 11 to 2 you are served lunch. From 2 to 4 pm you get an afternoon meal, and from 4 onward you receive dinner. The meal is a three course meal, and varies depending on the day. Generally there is a four day rotation of meals that repeats itself. If you go on day one of the rotation, you would end up with a certain meal, and on day 2 it would be something different. For each meal, there are generally at least two options. We had breakfast on the Eurostar. It came with an omelet, sausage, orange juice, coffee or tea, some type of bread and jam, and an option to have some champagne! This was cool. The second choice for that day was a cold selection instead, such as a muffin and some type of fresh fruit. Yogurt came with either choice.
Seat selection is the next thing to think about in first class. You will either sit in a row like an airplane, which has a fold-down table for your food, or you will sit facing your partner, with a fixed table in between the two of you. I prefer the fixed table facing you. It seems as if you have more room and then it is like you are eating a meal in a restaurant instead of on a plane. Unless you specify, when you book your tickets you will get whatever seats they place you in. I actually called raileurope, and asked about requesting seating. If you get the seating chart, they can tell you what seat you will have. If you don’t like it, before you book it, ask them to redo the reservation and hopefully this time you will get the type of seat you want. If there are four of you in your party, most likely you will be sitting facing each other. If there are two of you or one, you could end up in a row or facing each other. It is not possible to request a certain seat on a car, but you can ask to have the closest seat available to car 11, seat 56, for instance. If you want to sit in seat 57, request closest to 56 as an example. To view the seating chart, go to http://www.eurorailways.com/brochure/premier/eurostar_seatplan.pdf . There are 18 cars on each Eurostar train, with two dedicated as bar cars. Cars 14 through 18 and 1 through 5 are second class. Cars 7 through 8 and 10 through 12 are first class. Car 9 is premier class (business class).
4. Luggage will be something to think about. I will tell you upfront, the less you pack, the easier your life will be in Europe. If you are riding the trains, the less luggage you have the less you will have to lug on and off each train and the less time you will spend. In the Eurostar, there are luggage racks at the end of each car. The luggage racks aren’t as big as you think they would be, and if you are one of the last to board the train, they could be already full. The downside to this also is that you may be seated at the other end of the car, a good distance from your luggage. This would make access difficult, and if the train makes a stop to load or unload passengers, you are prey to someone trying to steal your luggage from the train. (Believe it or not, someone could jump on the train at a stop, take your luggage, and jump off just in time for you to be stuck on the train without your luggage.) To safeguard against this, we bought bike locks at Walmart, and locked our luggage to the racks. We also made sure to get our seats right next to the luggage racks, so we would be closer to our luggage! Using locks on your luggage itself can also deter thieves from breaking inside and taking things out.
There is room for the luggage overhead as well, or at your seat. Small suitcases and duffel bags will fit above your seat in an overhead rack. A medium suitcase might sit under your feet, but then you will have literally no leg room. They aren’t too picky about what you do with your luggage, but it can’t be out in the aisle because the staff are walking through constantly with drink carts and food carts for the meal in first class.
5. Train Station. The train station that used to be used in London was Waterloo International. This train station to me was somewhat hard to deal with. It was hard to figure out where to board the Eurostar. We rented a car through Avis, and couldn’t find the place to return it! If you rent a car from Avis, there is a separate building beside the train station on a side road where you have to return it! At Waterloo, you need to allow at least 30 minutes before your time for boarding the train. I would recommend giving yourself an hour, and an extra hour to find the place and get inside and find out where you are supposed to be. As of November 14, 2007, the Eurostar take-off point will change to St. Pancras International, a different train station. Hopefully this one will be more accommodating. This new starting point promises to reduce travel time by 20 to 25 minutes from London to Paris or Brussels.
The train station in Paris is also no picnic. You arrive in Paris and hardly anyone speaks English. Many people will want to put their luggage somewhere and go sightseeing. It took us two hours to accomplish this task. The luggage lockers are in the basement of the train station. Once you find them, you will need Euro change to pay for the lockers, so be ready for this. You have to go through security just to get into the locker room. Also, often the large size lockers fill up, and you are stuck with renting a couple medium or small ones instead. It costs 4 to 10 euros for each locker, depending on the size. Don’t expect the employees at the train station to speak English and answer these questions for you. If you are taking another train to the Eiffel tower, these trains are at the other end of the station from where the lockers are. The bathrooms are in the basement, almost directly below where you disembark from the Eurostar.
