Learned Traveller

I've decided to resurrect my blog, since the photos need a bit of commentary. But rather than talking about a particular trip, I thought for this first post I'd talk about something I've been mulling over for a while, and that is that, if you live in London, it can actually make a lot of sense to take the eurostar and fly from Brussels instead of flying from London. So here's why you should consider it:

1. Flights can be a lot cheaper from Brussels than London, I think because airport tax is a lot lower;

2. You feel like you are on holiday as soon as the train pulls out of St. Pancras;

3. You can probably fit a meal in Brussels in between arriving and your flight;

4. Brussels airport is much quieter and more relaxing than Heathrow or Gatwick;

5. If  you're travelling hand luggage only, and live near to St. Pancras, as I do, you can even cycle to the station and lock up your bike there for the duration of your trip.

To get started I suggest you go to the Matrix website, enter London as your departure site and select Brussels as a nearby airport so you can then compare prices. If the flight from Brussels is significantly cheaper, look at Eurostar prices, and make a decision. Clearly you've got to allow enough time to make your connections. There are direct trains from the Eurostar terminal in Brussels to the airport. I think that the risk of missing your outbound flight due to Eurostar delays is quite low (although I asked Eurostar for details of their train punctuality statistics and they refused to let me have them). On the way back, perhaps there is more risk of missing your train because of flight delays. This would have happened to me on my recent trip to the Azores, because the flight from the Azores to Lisbon was delayed, but TAP agreed that they would just fly me to London instead, so there wasn't any problem.

Another option is to take the Eurostar to Lille from where there is a direct bus to Brussels airport with ouibus. Also of course you can take the train and fly from Paris.