After a long day of travelling we got home around about 9pm last night.  Actually the drive back from Ashford was really uneventful apart from some lunatic driving along the M11 at night with no rear lights.  Luckily he didn’t cause too many problems.

To day it is time to start to take stock and the first thing I want to report on is the bizarre treatment of first class passengers on Thalys.

I am not joking…this is the first class waiting area for the Thalys train

I suspect that the train is configured for Gard de Nord in Paris so the first class are closest to the station when it arrives.   What it does mean is that the first class is way outside the covered area of the station and you have to wait in a bus shelter.  The weather was fine yesterday but I guess in the middle of the winter it wouldn’t be too much fun.

This really is how isolated First Class is from the rest of the station

How very Dutch.