We got a present!!!

 Today Andrea brought home a Big Bag Full of Goodies!!  She said her friend Vicky had been to a place called Dieppe in France and bought some things for me!!  How nice of her!

 So - what we got, then???#

 Oh!  What's this??

 Camembert cheese!!!!  YUM!!!

 And goat's cheese!!!!!  Brill!

 Oooh, it's a packet of smelly tea!!  It's black tea with bits of caramel in it and smells wonderful!!!

 And a posh tea strainer to put in your mug!!!  The tea goes in the strainer which goes in the mug, then you pour the hot water in and let it stew and then you take the strainer out and put it on the "lid" so it doesn't drip anywhere!  Snazzy!

 BISCUITS!!!!  Yummers!!

 Oh, what's this???

 CHOCOLATE!!!!  EXCELLENT!!!

Oh wow - the jar is fish soup (you need to add water or cream) and the tin is something called Cass-oo-lay...... what's that???

 Oh!!  Soh-mon foo-may...... that's smoked salmon!!  Andrea says that's a pate spread!

 CANDY!!!  YAY!!!

 AND a bottle of fizzy wine!!!  That'll make us hiccup!!!!!

Oh what brill presents!!  We need to send Vicky shopping some more!!!

She got us this pretty card too!!!!!  That's Dieppe, you know.....!

Beanie and The Big French Storm, Day Four!!!

 On Wednesday, we got up and went down for breakfast.  The television was on again showing the French news, and suddenly, there was a newsflash thingy saying that Eurostar was going to be running later that day!!  YIPPEEEE!!!  We can get home!!!  Andrea asked the receptionist lady if they could find out more details, and she said that there may be delays on the train.  That's OK, so long as they're running!

 After breakfast, we went up to our room and packed our things.  We had time to go out for a bit, but because everything had frozen over during the night, we probably wouldn't get far without slipping over, so we stayed in.

 We tied some more tags to the coat hanger in the room, too!!!

Then, just before noon, we went down and checked out of the hotel.  They got us a taxi cab back to the station too, and it only cost 8 Euros.

 Here we are back at the Lille Europe station.  We had an hour and a half before the train, but that gave us enough time to get some food to nibble on during the ride, and to find out when the train would be leaving.

 Then all of a sudden, I shouted out WHOOOPPPEEEEE!!!!!!!  That's our train to London at the bottom!!!

It isn't late at all!!!  It's arriving bang on time!!!  BRILLIANT!!!!!

We're going home!!!

 We went through the security clearance and passport control down to the departure lounge.  It still looks very grey outside.....

 It even started snowing again!!!

 And we're off!!!!  We got a window seat too so we watched all the clouds and snow.....

There was an announcement later to say there was speed restrictions in place so we'd lose 30 minutes on the way to the Calais side of the tunnel.  Actually, that's not bad at all - they were saying an hour delay on the news.....

 We left another tag on the table!!!

And here we are on the English side of the tunnel!!!  We're home!!!

 Here we are!!!  Exit, this way!

 And we saw the big statue again!!

 On the way out of the Eurostar terminal, we changed our left over Euro money back into English.  There were huge enormous lines of people waiting to get onto delayed Eurostar trains going into France..... the lines were half way to the street!!!  We also saw a chap playing the piano too!  That was fun!

 Oh hang on!  We don't normally go this way...... OH!!  Trains to Brighton go from St Pancras??  Really??  I didn't know that - we don't have to spend another hour and a half on the bus going across London!!!  Oh, that's really handy, that is!!

 We got a First Capital Connect train that went to Brighton at 15:09 hours!  It went a completely different route, and we crossed over Blackfriars Bridge and saw Tower Bridge from it!!  (That's the one that lifts up in the middle to let boats through).  Then the train did a U turn on the other bank......

 And we got a totally different view of The Shard building!!

You get some interesting views from this train!!

 Here we are crossing a Viaduct bridge just before Haywards Heath!  We're nearly home.....

 and we're back....... a short walk home, now!  We got home for 5 p.m. too.

And you'd never know it had snowed......

Because we couldn't get any postage stamps, I didn't have anything for my passport.  Andrea said not to worry...... we found a used Lille subway ticket on the floor on Monday, and picked it up.  Andrea had a hole punch gadget that punches out faux stamp shapes with deckled edges, so she cut out a piece of the subway ticket, and used that as a faux stamp for my passport!!  Then she stamped on a rubber stamp that we bought in Loisir et Creations two years ago, when we last came to Lille!!!

Wow, what an adventure!!!

Beanie and The Big French Storm, Day Three.

 When we got up on Tuesday morning, we looked out of the window.  Oh - My - Fart!!!!  Where did all that snow come from??!?!?!

 There's LOADS of it!!!!!

 We went down to breakfast (they gave us TWO Panno Shoko Lah!!!  They must know I like it!!)  They had the French news on telly in the breakfast room.... apparently, there had been a huge storm over France last night, all the Eurostar trains had been cancelled - in fact, ALL TRAINS altogether had been cancelled, even the regular trains!! - both airports in Paris were shut down, all the main interstate highway roads were closed with many accidents on them overnight, and parts of France were without electricity!!!!!  And they weren't going to get the electricity power back for 15 days!!!!!

What are we going to do?????  Are we stranded again???

 Andrea said not to worry, we're booked at the hotel tonight anyway, so let's go out and see what's happening in Lille town centre.  This is the Grand Place square...... people were out and about now which meant that the snow was already getting a bit slushy and slippy.

 We found the Blue Cat chocolate shop..... which was shut because the staff couldn't get in!!

 Coo..... it certainly looks pretty, but we still had that blustery cold wind.  Andrea said the news people said the cold wind made it feel like minus 5 C!!

 We had a look on the map for the Post Office and went to where it was - but even that was closed because staff couldn't get in!!!  We can't even post our postcards to our friends!!!!!  Andrea said we'll just have to post them when we get home to England then...... so then we went for coffee to warm up a bit.

 Then we went to the Meert shop to see if they were open.......

 They were!!!!  YAY!!!  So we went in and bought a box of goodies to take home!!

Then we went down the road to see if we could find any shops at all that were open.....

 We found La Droguerie shop which is full of buttons and fancy trimmings, but they were shut because of the weather too.  Everywhere was closed!!!  Well, we knew one place that was open......

 So we went back to Meert again for coffee and cake!!!

 And we had chocolate too!!!

 It was still the morning but it was freezing cold outside, all the shops were shut, and the metro/subway system was closed down too.  The snow was getting very slushy and slippery by now, so we decided it would be a good idea to go back to the hotel and stay warm and paint some pictures.  So we did!!!

We saw some more TV news all in French, and there was even people stuck on trains at Rouen overnight (that's in between Paris and the Channel) that were handed out blankets to keep warm and fed croissants and coffee in the morning!  Even the Paris Metro system was closed!  Gosh.....

 At lunch time we got hungry, so we went out again to where we'd had our first coffee in the morning.  We noticed they had boards out with food menu written on them, and one of them was that mool ma-rinni-air thing I saw in the phrase book yesterday

 OH!!!!!  It's marinated mussels in a white wine sauce!!!!!

 And proper crispy cooked chips too!!!!  OH YUMMY!!!!!!  This is the best lunch I think I've ever had!!  Oh, I'm glad we came here now, this is FAB!!
(the whole thing in French is Mool Mah-rinni-air oh van plonk ay Fritz)

This is where we had lunch...... Oh, I hope we come back here again when it's not snowing!!!

It was getting colder outside and everywhere was still shut, so we went back to the hotel because there was nothing else we could do.  (besides stay out and slip over and get hurt!)  Eurostar was still closed today and looked like it may be closed tomorrow too.  Andrea was getting rather worried and stressed out by the afternoon so we rang her Dad to see if he could find out anything on his computer.  He rang back later on and said that the first two Eurostar trains the next morning were cancelled but may be working from lunchtime onwards, with delays of up to an hour.  So we decided to go downstairs to reception and order a taxi to the Eurostar station for the next day anyway.  Andrea said she didn't think we had it quite so bad in Lille as they had it in Paris so we may be OK to get home.  We also heard on the news that the windchill factor would take the temperature down to minus 10 C that night!!!!  THAT'S COLD!!!

Later that evening, we went over to the ElephanThai restaurant for dinner again.  It was way too slippery to go any further and Andrea didn't have her clompy stompy boots with her..... we didn't know it would be this bad!!!!!

This time, we had a Shrimpy fried noodley dish for dinner that was rather yummy!!!  We couldn't eat it all though, Andrea's tummy ties itself up in knots when she gets stressed out, so she couldn't eat much...... but I tried to eat more for her!!!

And then it was time for bed.  I hope we get home tomorrow.......

......TO BE CONTINUED......