Europe is overrun with Chinese tourists this summer, and Muslims from a variety of places as well - from India and the Gulf, and probably elsewhere, escaping the heat. Given that the Chinese economy is headed into the toilet, it is somewhat surprising that the people are traveling on holiday.
My guess: the trips were arranged and paid for before their stock market tanked, so they might as well take them as there aren't refunds. If the downturn continues, there will probably be fewer next summer, fewer Chinese that is. The Muslims, who knows?
Guide Geoff's wife Sheila is going to Britain with us as she has to go back to work as a nursing supervisor for a firm doing forensic medicine. We bail out at St. Pancras station but she takes an additional three trains to get home, somewhere in the Midlands.
Throughout Switzerland we didn't have to schlep luggage as the Swiss have a system for groups where the hotel you're leaving sends the group's checked luggage on to the next evening's hotel. It typically arrived before we did. Now on the way home we are our own luggage porters and it is a pain, particularly when moving from one platform to another often entails negotiating two sets of stairs.
They should have elevators or escalators but few stations have them. We consider ourselves lucky if there is a ramp instead of stairs. Tugging a 40 lb. suitcase up or down stairs is no joy. Ah, well, it is soon over. This time tomorrow we'll be in the arms of Delta and they'll get our checked luggage to Jackson.
An interesting factoid: Switzerland which is aggressively neutral (not a member of the EU or NATO) is nevertheless a member of the Schengen group within which nobody checks travel docs at borders. The U.K. is not a member, which is why a whole bunch of third world "migrants" are piled up at Calais trying to sneak across the channel into the U.K. where there are jobs.
The French are mad at the Brits because these people pile up in France in squatter camps. The French blame the Brits for having jobs which lure the migrants to the channel, essentially maintaining an attractive nuisance. The solution is for the French to run those migrants out of there, they are illegal entrants and have no right to be there. My guess: the French don't want to be seen as the villains harassing poor SOBs whose main crime is trying to better their economic situation.
Later, aboard the Eurostar: The transition through the Gare de Leon to the taxi rank was smooth, and the cab was quick on a Sunday afternoon as most of Paris was either on summer hols or home digesting a large dinner and worrying about the state of their livers. Where they were not was on the Paris streets. We got through Brit passport control and after a short wait, boarded the Eurostar and claimed good seats Geoff had reserved for us. London, here we come.
