Leaving Continental Europe

August 10th--After 12,000 miles and 13 countries, it's hard to believe that 6 months has passed and we are now leaving continental Europe. Our train for London didn't leave until 2pm, so we had a little time to kill this morning. After having breakfast at the hotel, Amy took the kids to a nearby playground while I packed up our bags. By the time I went to meet them, it had started to rain. Luckily, the playground had a large canopy cover so the kids were protected from the rain. They played for a while until it was time for lunch. There was a nice Italian restaurant nearby so we stopped in for pizza before heading out. It was a great lunch and so with our bellies full, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags. We took a taxi to the train station and found our train to Lille. It was a nice double-decker train and our seats were up top. We plopped down in our seats and were on our way. The train had power outlets so I spent some time trying to restore Windows and fix the computer. I had no luck so finally spent some time making sure all our files and pictures were properly backed-up. We had a quick turn in Lille to catch the Eurostar train that travels through the chunnel to England. We only had 25 minutes and they suggest a 30 minute check-in time to get through customs. Well, at some point during our journey, they come on the loud speaker and let us know that we are running 15 minutes behind. We knew that we still had about 10 minutes, but were worried they would close the check-in. When the train started to pull into the station at Lille, we stood in the doorway of the train with our bags. When the train arrived we took off running for our next train. Luckily the Eurostar check-in was right at the top of the escalator where we arrived. We thought we were fine, but as we were filling out our customs forms, people started shouting at us to hurry. We were rushed through and as we entered the baggage check area, they closed the doors behind us. We were the last ones. Then more people started shouting at us to run to our train. So we grabbed our bags and took off towards the platform. We assumed the train was about to leave us, but when we got to the platform, the train was not even there! It arrived about 2 minutes later and we quickly got on and it was off. The train was packed. We weren't too worried because we only had a 30 minute train ride. Well, so we thought. About 15 minutes into the train, when we were still not even in the chunnel yet, I realized that London was an hour behind so our ride was actually an hour and a half. I should have realized that it would be longer than 30 minutes to get to London from Lille, but was just too excited to get there that I didn't even think about it. We finally arrived in London a little after 6pm (new time) and made our way to the ticket office to purchase tickets for tomorrow's journey to Dublin. We had already planned our route and knew that the train left at 7:10am. Since it was an early train, we had reserved a room at a Hilton across from the train station we leave from (that luckily was only a few blocks from this station that we arrived in). So we walked to our hotel room. When we arrived, they let us know that we could have a 3 course meal in their dinning room for $12 per person and the kids were free. Being tired, this sounded great. So we dropped off our bags and went to the restaurant for dinner. It was a nice dinner and was very satisfying after a day on a train. We then went back to the room and crashed for our early wake-up tomorrow.