Road Tour - Europe (Day 1 - 16 Aug 09 - London to Paris)

London - Folkstone: We left our house at 7 am with a lot of excitements, a bit of anxiety and plenty of du'a that our trip will be smooth, safe and sound. We headed for Folkestone to catch our 920 am EuroTunnel crossing to Calais. EuroTunnel is a fast train service carrying cars (and even trucks) across the Channel Tunnel.


Folkestone is about 120km from London and not far from Dover where people cross the channel on ferries. The latest time to check-in is 30 minutes before departure and we barely made it (a note to ourselves – in future, leave at least 2.5 hours driving time and don’t underestimate crossing the city especially on a working day).


Folkestone – Calais: The crossing itself was very convenient and relatively comfortable. After checking in at the toll-both, we are given a tag with an alphabet on it (ours was “M”). We just had time to park at the departure complex and let the kids go to the WC before the announcement for “M” tag-holders to proceed to departure. After passing through the French Immigration, a short drive took us to the train and we proceeded in a single-file to the top-deck of the train (the Euro Tunnel train carries cars on two levels). During the 35 minutes journey, we were comfortably sitting in our car and before we knew it, we saw the sky of Calais, France.

Calais – Paris: At exactly 11 am we disembarked from the EuroTunnel train. Before you think it’s a typo, it was indeed 11 am. The clock moves forward 1 hour in Europe. “Think Right....Think Right....Think Right.” That’s the main thing to remember as they drive on the opposite side of the road on the continent. The journey to Paris was quite smooth on one of the main highways. And....even before we can start to miss Malaysia, we are reminded again of the infamous Toll payments. It costs about EUR20 from Calais to Paris ~300km.



A few other things about driving there; max speed limit on the highway is 130km, they drive on the right, there are good signages generally, the slow lane is on the right because they drive on the right, there are a lot of ‘viaduc’ – bridges, the overtaking lane is on the left because they drive on the right, the rest areas are well equipped (though the fuel station operator, the restaurant staff etc will pretend that they don’t speak English), and they drive on the right (if you think the driving tips above is insufficient – just keep repeating the last one).

With one stop for fuel and lunch (Nasi Lemak Ayam Goreng and Moist Apple Cake, both homemade – our best meal for the next 9 days) and refuelling, we arrived at our hotel at around 3 pm. We also noticed the very hot weather there. It was 30 deg C outside.