Day 3

Day 3 was a travel day.

Dubai - London on QF9 arriving early morning. This meant trying to get as much sleep as possible. Sleep on a plane is greatly helped by flying business class in two ways. 1. You can get a decent meal in the lounge before you board so you can skip the dinner meal served on the plane; and 2. The seats effectively turn into beds so you can sleep lying flat. All in we got nearly 5 hours sleep which is as much as you could hope for on a 7hr flight.

Some of this trip is work for me so we were picked up at the airport and taken to my London office for a quick shower and a 90 min meeting. Then on to St Pancras Station to catch the Eurostar.

I had a fantastic surprise waiting for me after the meeting, our youngest daughter was waiting for me. Mrs Gazza and her had hatched a plan to surprise me. Mrs Gazza let the cat out of the bag a bit earlier but it was great to see her again only a month after she had left to go to the UK on a volunteer program.

So daughter stayed with us at St Pancras until check-in time and then it was off to France.

The Eurostar looked a bit aged to me but it wasn't slow. I had my GPS with me and clocked speeds just under 300kph. It's quiet and smooth, hardly feeling like the speeding bullet that it is.

At Lille we changed trains to an SNCF train to Amiens where we were picked up by Mrs Gazza's brother and his wife. We stayed the night at Josy B&B in Flesselles. Accommodation was hard to find in this area due to the Anzac Day event at Villers Bretonneux. This place is a gem though. The hosts are fantastic, the beds comfortable and the place has been renovated with attention to the important details travellers look for.