Eurostar / TGV
Eurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Amsterdam, Avignon, Brussels, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Paris and Rotterdam. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France.
TGV is the express train service in France.
June 2018
St Pancras International
London
UK
Our review
Outbound
Entrance into the terminal was easy and we passed through security and made our way to the lounge and enjoyed a morning coffee. When the boarding was announced we made our way to the train and found it easy to find our carriage and seat. Luggage space, for larger cases, is at a premium but you can place small cabin size luggage in the overhead racks.
The train departed on time and made its way to France, we enjoyed the first round of refreshments we had brought with us. We arrived at Lille International on time and made our way up to the concourse for a quick comfort break (remember to have some change with you). The TGV train to Le Mans starts from Lille so was easy to find and again it was simple to find the correct carriage and seats. As expected the train departed on time and was very smooth, we enjoyed some more of the refreshments we had brought with us. We sat back and enjoyed the remainder of the journey to Le Mans and arrived on time.
Return
After checking out from the hotel we made our way to the station, the required platform was easy to find and the information points directed you to the right place on the platform for your carriage. The train arrived spot on time and there was ample time to board, stow the luggage and found our seats before the train departed. On this part of the journey, we made our way to the buffet carriage and sampled some sandwiches, it was pretty standard railway fare and filled a gap. We arrived back at Lille International on time and used the time until our Eurostar service to get some refreshments.
It was from here that the journey took a turn, for the worse, when we checked in for the next part of the journey back to Kings Cross St Pancras we were given new tickets and were advised that this train was a different configuration to our outbound one. When we boarded the train it was busy and there was very little room for any luggage, this service does start from Brussels, we then found out that we did not have the table seats that we had booked and now had standard seats. The train did run on time and we arrived as expected, it was a bit of a bun fight to get off the train as the luggage was stacked on top of each other.