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Pleasures of Paris Stays

Whilst man might constantly be inventing new ways to go faster, louder, higher, deeper, some inventions will never go away. They may be improved upon, but the fundamental idea remains the same. And these feats of engineering must surely be doing something right to have lasted longer than concorde, or hair-crimpers (though I am sure Christina Aguilera still owns a pair of those…).

One such invention is the train. Whilst everybody keeps tooting their horns about the car and the plane – not least because they have been advertised to represent personal luxury and wealth - the train happily avoids such false representation due to its inherently communal, connective purposes.

It was the train, not the car or even the boat, which drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain and indeed across the world. The train connected the ports to the growing cities, the cities to the countries. It wasn’t just useful shifting coal from mining towns like Swansea and Cardiff down to the ports and out to other nations: it was essential to the movement of goods within Britain, from steel to spices.

And the train – like the boat or the plane – can stretch to international travel. Some of the most famous views of the world come from trains such as the Orient Express, or the beautiful track which stretches down from the canyons of New Mexico into Mexico itself and down towards South America.

But you can hop on the train and be in another world much closer to home – jump on the Eurostar and find yourself in the centre of Paris in two hours. And with cheap travel deals, you can treat yourself to a huge range of last-minute Paris hotels in a range of location across the city with Octopus Travel. You could go from train to luxury apartment in minutes! Who said the planes and cars were more elegant?