After Sweden the three muskateers headed off to London.  We had an Air BnB in Clapham Junction booked and we wanted to show Stefan all the key sights.  He had been to London before but was too little to remember.  Off we went and bought an Oyster card for the trains and tube and a Hop on Hop off bus ticket and proceeded to Hop on and Hop off buses.  Each morning we would head off with our Oyster card and Hop on Hop off bus card and a smile and a good attitude.  We did the canal tour from Tower Bridge to Westminster and back as well and were very disappointed with the scaffolding over Big Ben.  We went to Madame Tussauds which Stefan declared to be catering to the wrong demographic by having 4D experiences and not enough waxworks.  I have to say I agree.  It was slightly disappointing but a box ticking exercise nevertheless for Stefan and he now doesn’t need to return.  Spent a great afternoon at the Tower of London which is always great and I still giggle every time I see Henry VIII’s codpiece in his suit of armour.  The Tower of London also contains the worlds dumbest Americans who literally think that everything in England has been built as a tourist attraction.

Then it was off to the pub to watch Sweden v England in the Fifa World Cup.  Hmmm we were very quiet little swedes that day.  But on occasion Nigel would elbow me and tell me to quiet down when I groaned at the wrong times.  England won quite convincingly and that night was incredibly rowdy in Clapham Junction.  There was a viral video shot about 100 metres from our flat of a guy leaping of the top of a double decker bus and straight through a bus shelter roof.  It was pretty rowdy.

On one of the days we hired a car from Heathrow and headed off for a drive in the country.  Our first stop was the village of Turville (or Dibley as you may know it).  This quaint little village was used for the whole Vicar of Dibley series for all the exterior shots.  Being only 40 minutes from London and having a church and a vicarage it was a great choice.  We had lunch in a pub that was founded in 1550 and does a really good venison pie.  (Jeez England does history well).  We then drove through the University City of Oxford and on to the Cotswolds with their white and black houses with thatched roofs.  It was so blimmin CUTE.  We ended the day at Stonehenge (which is smaller than we thought) but getting up close to it was actually quite worth it (as opposed to the cheapskates who hold up traffic on the motorway past it to take a photo).  To be fair you do get a good photo on the motorway and the traffic is slow enough for you to see it.

Back to Clapham Junction for a late night kebab… as you do in London.

London was fun but incredibly crowded and busy.  Being in the middle of Summer holidays with the best weather England had ever seen probably didn’t help with the crowds.  It was time to head off to St Pancras station to board the Channel Tunnel to Paris.  Nigel and I had never done it before and Nigel was really looking forward to it.  Stefan was looking forward to getting a new country to add to his list, as despite having been to 46 countries in his life, had never been to France.  Fair to say that the trip itself is fairly disappointing.  The queuing to get through passport control, security and onto the train took longer than the actual trip but I guess that’s the point of the high speed trains.  I can tell you too from experience that if you jump high enough up in the air when the train is going 300 kms per hour that you don’t go flying down the back of the train.  But when you arrive at Gare Du Nord and get off in the heart of Paris it’s pretty awesome.

We had an Air BnB that was behind some very large wooden doors in the streets behind Gare Du Nord.  It’s in a part of Paris called Little India, which is next to Little Turkey… you could get a great curry or kebab if you wanted them.  When we checked in the owner also told us that the pickpockets frequent the road and to be very aware.  We were and we needed to be.  Especially the night that France beat Russia to make the finals in the Fifa World Cup.  Apparently (we didn’t see it) there was a riot outside our flat the next night and the police were crawling all over the place when we left.  After the final where they won against Croatia there was more rioting all over Paris with tear gas and water cannons.  I’m quite glad that we weren’t there for that.

While we were there we got a two day Hop on Hop off bus ticket and proceeded to Hop on and off buses again.  By the end of our time we had pretty much seen all the major sights and learnt more Parisian history that you could ever need at a pub quiz.

Stefan had especially wanted to go to the Louvre and so we spent an afternoon wandering about completely lost and standing in queues.  The longest queue was for the ladies toilet and so Nigel and Stefan just had to wander about and amuse themselves for literally 45 minutes.  The Mona Lisa was packed, as was Venus De Milo and Stefan was really disappointed to find that most of the paintings he wanted to see were being borrowed for other exhibitions or were in a part of the Louvre that was closed.  It seems that’s always the way in Europe.  It’s either closed, away on tour or under scaffolding.

We finished our time in Paris with a really expensive steak and béarnaise sauce meal at a quintessential French restaurant.  Food and company and location and wine was fantastic.  Paris you little minx you certainly can deliver.  It was the best 200 Euro we had ever spent.

The next day we went back to Gare du Nord to check in for the Eurostar.  As we arrived we were told there had been a suicide on the track and there would be a 60 minute delay.  Sobering stuff and despite the waiting I think everyone was actually quite understanding. The queues were awful and the technology at the station kept failing.  The ticket scanning service failed and so Nigel ended up going through and Stefan and I ended up in another queue.  We then decided to use our European Passports to cut the queue and ended up getting through faster than Nigel.  His bag scanning machine had broken down and so his wait was awful.  Our issue is that Stefan and I left France on New Zealand passports and then left again on Swedish passports and never actually entered England.  Hmmm we will see if that causes an issue when I try to leave.

Back to London and Stefan took his luggage, his oyster card and a smile and a good attitude and headed off to Heathrow to fly home.   We on the other hand were off to Market Harborough to pick up our canal boat for a week.  Our last night in London was spent watching the canal boats youtube do’s and don’ts video and researching knots.   This next leg will either be amazingly epic or a complete debacle.  I’ll let you know.