Day 1 2/8/08 - France

London -> Ashford -> Paris

Highlight

• Stuffy train ride to Ashford.
• It rained heavily so we gave up trying to see the town, and headed straight for the Ashford Designer Outlet instead.
• Well, this seemed to be stragith out of UK suburbia, with overweight families dragging along their kids to indulge in the fast food at the food court.
• I was disappointed there was nothing on offer in terms of food, so I actually had to eat fish and chips from a chain store.
• Slokky though got to indulge in his Maccas, and I had a bite to see if anything has changed in the 15 years or so I have been avoiding the place. Even though they have supposedly upgraded their ingredients, it seems the taste is still the same.
• This place is supposedly designed by the same architect as the Millennium Dome, and it actually looks like it from the outside, but the design was definitely not practical as it was not shielded from the elements, in a country that constantly rained, so that as we walked between the shops, we kept getting wet.
• We started off slowly, but then stalled at a couple of stores, and had to rush at the end. I was satisfied though that we had covered most of what we wanted by the time we had to leave.
• The discounts differed. Some were very good while others weren’t worth bothering. Ted Baker had nothing my size, neither did Next
• Ended up with:
  • silk knots (£2)
  • Ralph Lauren shorts (£6.99
  • Adidas tank top (£7)
• Eventually it did stop raining, so it made our walk back to Ashford International a bit more pleasant, but still no sun.
• The check-in for Eurostar was very quick, so we had to hang around for a long time at the not much to do terminal.
• We sat next to some extremely noisy people on the Eurostar, so I couldn’t sleep.
• Eurostars hotel was very modern, very much like the Scandinavian design hotels.
• Dressed up for dinner. Luckily other people were quite dressed up too so we felt good.
• Dinner was excellent. We went a la carte for once, and was treated to some an amazing meal. The service was a bit slow but the waiters were so cute!
• The weather had changed for the better, so we took a leisurely walk to the metro. Ah, Paris.

Food

• Harry Ramsden's lunch:
  • fish and chips (£5.20)
  • apple juice
• McDonalds oriental beef burger and chips
• Senderen dinner:
  • bread sticks
  • saffron lobster soup
  • Chanterelle mushrooms served with squid and cockles flavoured with spiced oil
  • Poached duck liver with morel mushrooms, walnut and curry
  • Roasted wild duck with beetroot, cooked in a salt crust
  • Roast suckling pig, leeks with rougail, carrot taglitalle with pink berries and mango
  • raspberry pannacotta
  • French napolean with Tahiti vanilla cream
  • Butter biscuit with rhubarb and strawberry
  • raspberry macaroon, orange jelly, almond tartlette with psichacio