Opera District, Paris 'Chic'
Gare Du Nord, Paris 'Britain Starts Here'
Brent Cross, London 'Ticket to Ride'
Camera: iPhone 4S with Hipstamatic and Snapseed, Canon 5DmkII
Up well before the sun today. Work calls for me to be in Paris for a lunchtime event, nicely coinciding with Fashion Week in the 'City of Lights'. So it's an early morning departure from a fog shrouded St Pancras on the Eurostar,the ultimate symbol of Entente Cordiale. Fashion Week means the departure lounge feels more like a fashion show with impeccably dressed women with expensive luggage everywhere as opposed to the usual frumpy middle class types from Hampstead en route to Provence. There is of course a sprinkling of Americans as always, the young backpackers full of excitement at the start of their european adventure proper and the retiree's on a modern day 'Grand Tour'.
After much gentlemanly behaviour helping ladies lift heavy bags into overhead luggage racks, a strong coffee, pain au chocolate, and Photographers i on the iPad see the journey fly past, thorough a misty England and onto France and it's Franglais booze warehouses. The fortune of being in coach 18 at the front of the train and the lack of heavy luggage mean I get to the taxi rank at Gare Du Nord first and I'm off and away whizzing through Paris with a typically kamikaze taxi driver.
The event is a great success and Paris puts on it's best chic for the occasion, ok let's be honest, Parisian women are always this chic.
There's time for a late lunch with a French colleague including an amazing desert - pastry base, bananas, creme fraiche, and caramelised brown sugar. Then it's time to grab a taxi back to Gare Du Nord though this time through hellish Vendredi rush hour traffic where stopping for red lights seems to be optional.
Where St Pancras is clean and efficient Gare Dun Nord is cramped and dirty and the security queue is long and slow. I do however get to witness Zandra Rhodes getting a pat down, only after she is asked to step aside to let me through. Less belts and buckles next time Zandra. The departure lounge at this end is small and cramped and every available space is occupied with French ex-pats and holidaymakers including a further sprinkling of Americans.
A brief nap, followed by a very strong coffee and a catch-up with the cameraman and recording engineer from the earlier event in the buffet car and we are soon back in England. A quick scan through my photos from the day, deleting any shots that aren't keepers, fills the remainder of the journey and I'm soon back in St Pancras. There's time for a brief pause to take in the utterly breathtaking station now complete with massive Olympic rings, surely just there to rub it in to Parisians who missed out in the race to host 2012.
But my day is not over yet and it's on to the tube and another event, but that's another story...
