Long journey to Paris

After a long trip we finally go to Paris on Friday. Three flights (1 + 8 + 12 hours) got us to Heathrow at 6 in the morning. The only good thing about the flights was the ace check in lady at Qantas domestic in Melbourne, she made sure we had spare seats beside us for the long flights. This meant that I could lie on the spare seats and save my sore back some of the pain of airport seats.
Once at Heathrow the fun with the bike began. We loaded all the heavy stuff into the bike bag, plonked the duffel on top and preceeded to drag it across London. It went in and out of trains, up escaltors and around railway stations. We had 2 hours to look around London near Waterloo while waiting for the Eurostar.
The Eurostar was great, very quick and only 20 minutes of the trip was in the tunnel. The rest of the time the train whips through nice countryside. We soon arrived in Paris and began the next bike epic. We managed to get to our stop okay, at La Defense but then had to find the hotel. In a confusing split level street system we took the long way around dragging the bike bag through roadworks, down more escalators and off curbs. Finally we were there and we soon collapsed for a nice long sleep in a real bed.