The Exhilarating Eurostar

The holiday season brings plenty of cheer. Year after year we await the Christmas season for those fun-filled office parties, family get-togethers, sumptuous food and wine, bargain shopping, new gadgets and even resolutions to change some aspect of self for better. Amidst all these is the curiosity and excitement about what the New Year has in store. Man, Christmas does excite me!

Someone recently told me that I am a marketers dream for my love of new things in life and my enthusiasm to fulfill those needs. Being a marketing professional myself, I have always wondered if I would buy everything that appeals to me. Probably, but everything comes at a price, which at most times is far beyond my reach. For long I have always wanted to travel around Europe and despite living in the UK for nearly four years, I have had very few opportunities to get away. The first opportunity I had to travel somewhere in Europe was back in November 2004, when I traveled to Brussels for three days as a part of our university residential. Good thing Leeds Met MBA has this unique experience as a part of the course where we had an opportunity to learn and digest how the European Union works. Other than that, I had been to Switzerland purely on leisure for three days which I had extensively blogged about here. So the urge to travel has been lingering for a while now.

My fascination to travel by Eurostar, the newly opened Waterloo International Station and my enthusiasm to visit the city of lights fueled my travel dreams further. I managed to convince myself that December is THE right time to visit Paris as I had also found out that the EuroDisney in Paris would be celebrating 15 years of opening in December. We booked our tickets to travel by Eurostar to Paris and managed to get an extended six months Schengen visa, thanks to French courtesy.

Traveling to Paris is an unique experience as the city is brimming with plenty of excitement. But crossing the channel to Paris by Eurostar has its own aura and certainly deserves a separate post. So our French trip gives plenty of food for the blog in the coming days. Anyway, as with our previous trip we loyally logged on to Last Minute for our holiday package as it is simpler to use and offers convenient options to book tickets for both via Planes and Eurostar. I did try to book the package directly with Eurostar but for some weird reason, a similar holiday package with the Eurostar site is much more expensive. I guess this has more to do with the kind of agreements with hotels different operators have. I have found Last Minute to be definitely cheaper than other travel websites.

Watch this space for more on our French Odyssey!