We took the Eurostar train from London to Paris and were there in no time at all. When looking out the window the countryside scenery is quite pretty in France, large green fields with crops and small villages with A framed houses.The London Eurostar station was 5 star compared to the Paris Eurostar slum we walked into - there was rubbish everywhere, people begging and many groups of young men loitering and scanning the crowds.
It was good our impression of Paris changed once we left Gare du Nord station and met Jean-Marie at our lovely little apartment in Paris - he could not have been more helpful.
Grocery shopping is an experience when you cannot read/speak the language. We tried to buy bread for some sandwiches and ended up buying sliced bun, we did not have Google translate to check what brioche meant. It was bun posing as bread! Tranchée means sliced.
We went ok when buying mince for spaghetti bolognaise though - the mince was in foil packaging and was called steak hache (which translates as axe).