I was reading about the “Chunnel” on the Wikipedia. I’ve never been to Europe but I am betting a bunch of SD’ers have been through it.
So what’s it like? Is it claustrophobic? Is it fun? Boring? Describe for me your thoughts? How long did it take? Is it worth it? Or are there better means of going from the UK to France?
You’re in a tunnel for 15 minutes or so. It’s very boring. Definitely the easiest way to get from Paris to London.
I was in it when we took the Eurostar from London to Paris. It was dark. Just like any other tunnel. It didn’t seem like any big whoop.
The tunnel is really boring, you barely notice you’re in it. And it is by far the finest way to go from London-Paris. City centre-city centre in just over two hours.
Oh by the way, it isn’t really called the ‘chunnel’ over here, that was a name that seemed to be used a lot when it was being built, but not anymore. The train is called the Eurostar.
You’re sitting in the train, moving along, and all of a sudden it’s black outside. Twenty minutes later it’s daylight again, and you’re in France. That’s it. There’s no sensation of going underground or under a body of water.
I’m not claustrophobic, but I tried to pay attention when I was on the Eurostar (I went to London), but hey, after some minutes of it being dark outside, it was boring, so I continued reading my book…
That’s what it was like for me, only I ended up in England. Weird, that. 
(Disclaimer: I rode the Eurostar in 2000. Things may have changed since then.)
I had a Eurail pass and that got me a 50% discount on the ticket to London; I think I paid something like 500 francs (this was pre-euro-cash). London was my final destination, so I didn’t care that the Eurail pass was not valid in the UK.
The train was one of the longest passenger trains I’ve ever seen. There was a separate glassed-off area for boarding at Gare du Nord in Paris. Once I was in the boarding area, and my train was called, I had to go down steps and trudge most of the way along the train underneath my backpack.
Inside, the train was comfortable and spacious, but slightly grubby. The decor was all yellow and grey. This may just have been the coach class though. There was a steward who sold drinks and such; he had a portable computer and about six kinds of currency. This was fortunate as I had run out of francs, didn’t yet have pounds, and had to use my reserve US dollars. So there I was, a Canadian buying drinks on a train in France using US currency and getting change back in pounds…
In France, the train announcements were first in French and then in English. In the UK, they were in English and then in French. (This kind of linguistic order juggling is, of course, familiar to any Canadian. Just take the train from Toronto to Montréal sometime.)
The train went north from Gare du Nord and took its time on the local tracks in the city, but once it got out onto the high-speed lines, they really opened it up. The high-speed line parallels a freeway for quite a while, and the train was at least three times as fast as the traffic on the freeway.
The train got from Paris to the tunnel in less than two hours. The trip through the tunnel was twenty minutes of darkness as panache45 described; then we were passing through the English countryside.
At that time, the high-speed line from the tunnel to London was not finished, so we went along local lines at slow speed. I read later that these lines used a third rail like our subway lines, rather than overhead wires, and that the train could use more power than this rail could supply. The clearances were less as well. So we went relatively slowly through brushy cuttings and inder old brick bridges. We ended up at Waterloo station, where we went through British customs.
When I boarded in Brussel last year, there was a seperate terminal, too. First there was ticket check (like airport check-in), then border exit control (passport), and then x-ray of your luggage! (No TSA, though, thankfully) Since I had especially choosen train against flight partly because of the security nonense, I snarked at the guy if they thought somebody would kidnap a train His reply: No, but might blow it up. (Yes since the Eurostar is the only train that could be blown up.:rolleyes:)
I do remember that the design looked strange. The tables could be folded up and down, and things looked clean. But the colours were very old-fashioned, not the spiffy stuff you would expect from a new train.
That has changed a bit with the Euro instead of francs, though the British still keep their pound, no matter how far it drops.
The high-speed trains in France have their own tracks behind wire, so no sheepcan cause accidents…
That’s been changed, too - it’s now continous to St. Pancras station, where you exit at a special terminal again.
I can’t wait until they build the Dublin-Holyhead part of the Eurostar.
We took our 16 year old to London and Paris a few years back.
Took the chunnel because I had followed its progress and technology and was all excited for the kid to experience it.
She fell asleep when we got into the tunnel and woke up near Paris.
Turns out it’s dark outside and a lighted train inside. I was a little bummed at the non-experience but in retrospect, what was I thinking it would be?
A transatlantic tunnel, hurrah!
Oh, wait…
That’s exactly what I felt. I don’t really know what I was expecting!
And when will they finally get around to connecting that to the Killarney-New York City line?
Another way to travel through the tunnel is via the car shuttle. You drive your car onto the train in Folkestone and thirty five minutes later you drive off in Calais. You can either sit in your car and listen to the on-board radio station, or walk up and down between the rows of cars. Not very exciting, but a quick and sea-sick free way of crossing the English Channel.
Much worse is DRIVING through long tunnels. I once found myself driving in Switzerland through the St. Gotthard Tunnel…now that was a nightmare for me! The blast of neon light at regular intervals was making me ill and I felt like I was about to have a seizure. I was in a cold sweat when I finished that drive.
Blow up any number of trains you like. Kill a few people, damage a bit of track, whatever. Even when they blew up Tube trains, only the people in the immediate vicinity of the explosion were killed/badly injured, despite being underground. Blow up a tunnel under the sea? Not such a great idea. And I don’t really see why you’re rolling your eyes at completely non-invasive border controls. You would have had the same experience, barring the x-ray, if you’d come by ferry.
Right now, the euro is 1.17 to the pound and the US dollar is 1.69. Your point?
Yeah, the Chunnel was no biggie. Just dark. I wished we could have traveled via the old hovercraft method instead.
On the train, boring as all get go, plus the train is ridiculously cramped.
That’s going to be difficult. They’ll have to tunnel across Ireland.
No, I expect that part will be above ground.