3 capital cities in 3 days. Introduction.

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On February 1st, I was celebrating my 60th birthday. I wanted to do something special for this birthday, and I thought at a cheap trip to Paris and London when I received in January a 50% discount offer during 24h for all trips booked on a French coach company, Ouibus. The trip from Paris to London and back was at 14.90 Euros ! Then I noticed that in England, National Express had also very cheap tickets in February from London to Dublin, and I bought a round trip for £36. When I told in Calais to an inquisitorial custom officer that I had not a pound and was not intending to change any euro, she told me that I was needing pounds to book a hotel. No, I was not. Oh, yes, you need one, where will you sleep ? I would sleep in the bus to Dublin that I was taking at 6 pm. «Oh, Dublin...» She got confused, seemed lost in her thoughts, and asked me after a moment «Have you some family in France ?» Hmm, officer, I am French. She looked at my ID, said «Sorry», and gave it back to me. End of the screening process. Ireland has Euro and I did my shopping there ; maybe a tourist not spending a penny is not a good tourist for Britain, but I was not needing to change any money to cross UK... All the tickets I bought were for night coaches, so I had not to pay for any hotel. However finding a place to wash and change of underwear and socks has not been easy, most of the time I did it in toilets for disabled people. In Ireland, the Irish custom officer gave me back my ID with a «Thank you !» in French, and I received a very warm welcome, also in French, when asking my way to a police officer in Dublin. Every Irish I spoke to was very talkative and nice. At least, French are welcomed in Ireland. My trip was a 6 days trip (To Paris-London-Dublin-London-Paris-to home), I had 150 Euros in cash with me, and spent only about 50. It is one of the cheapest trip I ever did, but you will see that I visited a lot of monuments and museums. I will give a summary of the first days of the travel in 3 parts : Paris, London and Dublin. I left my city on the evening of Saturday Feb 2d with a bus scheduled to reach Paris at 6:15 am ; it arrived at 5:45 am at the new (for me) Paris-Bercy coach station (top right photo). It is cold and dirty, London Victoria coach station (bottom left) and Dublin-Busaras (bottom right) are way better.