I’m finally here…but only after the most grueling travel experience. The trip from London to Paris usually takes about 3 hours tops; however, Eurostar is a complete joke and it ended up taking me 7.5 hours! Yes, that’s the same amount of time it takes to get from NEW YORK to London. I got up at 4am so I can get to St. Pancras International (which is literally a 5 minute walk from my dorm) in time for my 5:25am train. I boarded the train and we got going at exactly 5:25 and I was amazed but I think my amazement is what jinxed the entire thing. An hour later, we were stuck because of some malfunction on the train and we literally sat for two hours. After just sitting for 2 hours, the conductor finally announced that the train cannot continue on to Paris (after giving us false hope 1/2 hour before saying that the problem is being fixed and that we’ll be on our way). We backed up for about 10 minutes into Ashford International and waited a few minutes for another Eurostar train to come in. That one turned out to be to full and I got out and waited a few more minutes for the next one. I finally boarded the next train to Paris and at this point it’s about 10:00am…meaning we should have been in Paris already if the first train hadn’t malfunctioned. I was freaking out because I thought my hostel wold cancel my reservation but then my need for sleep helped me relax and enjoy the rest of the smooth ride. It was also very beautiful (snowing!) and I would’ve enjoyed the view had I not been so peeved about the train situation. We finally got into Paris at about 1:00pm local time and I got out of the Gare du Nord and went into the Metro where I encountered three ticket machines for the zillions of people coming in from all over northern Europe…and so I waited for another hour to get my metro ticket. After getting to the front of the line, the machine decided to be difficult and after finally figuring it out, I didn’t have enough euros in change for the machine. Super peeved at this point because what kind of ticket machine doesn’t take bills?! So I decide to use my card and the machine didn’t accept American Mastercards! Ahh…I felt like I was going to break the machine at this point. So I reluctantly got off the line to go into the little station store and get change for my bill. The line was still massive and there was no way in hell that I was going to get in the back, so I went up to the front and pretended to use one of the broken machines. When it didn’t work, I expressed my frustration loudly so the ladies at the front of the other line would see and let me skip ahead. Thankfully they were nice enough to do that and after an 1.5 hr I finally got my metro ticket. Now, I’m walking toward the actual platform and I see that there are multiple ticket machines as you get closer to the platform. I wanted to kill someone at that moment but decided to laugh it off or else I would’ve screamed. Thankfully getting to the hostel was really easy and so this is where I am right now. I’m meeting up with the lovely Heena to grab some food and do some sightseeing so hopefully I’ll have a more eventful/positive post later on tonight!