B

Our sojourn in Britain was rather an unwilling one. We wanted to go directly from Paris to Beijing but could not get a visa. So instead we took our mountain of baggage to England and sought and got our visas there.

The day before we left rue de la Mare in Paris, our landlady came by and could not believe how much we had. Neither could Eurorail. They refused to take our luggage as carry on, in spite of the fact that we had clearly explained what we had in mind when we went to buy tickets. We only bought them because we got assurances. We had to troll our stuff halfway across the Gare du Nord and pay to have them shipped as freight.

The story does have a somewhat happy ending though. After writing and complaining they sent us a voucher for two complimentary return journeys on their cross-channel service.

In England we had two weeks of happy reunions. We went twice to Manchester. The first time to apply for our visas and the second to see if they had been granted. Our hearts were truly in our mouths. But we got them, went home, and bought tickets to fly to Beijing.