Today was a travel & dining day.

We were up fairly early and took the Tube to St. Pancreas International to take the Eurostar train through the Chunnel to Paris. The line was HUGE — more than a little bit of a madhouse, and worrisome. Worst of all: we thought we’d have time for coffee & croissants at the station. Turns out there was a Café Nero inside the ‘border control’ area and we had *just* enough time to buy a bit of breakfast before we boarded.

The Eurostar was nice, nothing special. It was only marred by the child in the seats across the aisle who had no concept of ‘inside voice’ and never nice stopped talking/ making noise.

Picking up the car (rented through Auto Europe and reserved at Europcar) was easy. Best of all: they let us put our luggage away and then leave the car parked in their garage wile we went to lunch at Terminus Nord. This restaurant came highly recommended, and seemed particularly lovely as a setting.

The food was good, but overpriced. We spent 2.5 hours for a starter (crab & avocado, salad, pea soup), main (sea bass fillet with a potato ‘cappuccino’ and mushrooms confit, pan seared duck breast with sweet potato mango tartin, sausages with sauerkraut, and pork tenderloin) and dessert (profiteroles w/ vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce). It was a lovely meal, but service was a bit spotty (even for Paris) and (like I said) we were surprised by the final cost.

Our trip to Balleroy was uneventful, although getting out of Paris was no fun. Our house is lovely — a perfect French Country Manor out in the middle of no where. Firm beds (YES!), comfortable furniture, a huge kitchen . . .  It was perfect.

For dinner we walked next door to Manoir de la Drome. Turns out that we had perfect timing as they were just opening (and are closed on Wed nights, so we’d have missed out entirely). This was a perfect, fabulous, luxurious meal that was utterly superb. (Can you tell I enjoyed it?)

We fell into bed late, too little sleep ahead for the long day coming.