In this solo vlog, Lena Benjamin recounts a budget coach trip she took from London to Paris in November 2016, when she was in her early 40s. She describes the 4‑hour Channel‑Tunnel journey, staying in a modest three‑star hotel with a group of women, and navigating the Paris Metro—highlighting a station that shared her name. Lena details iconic visits to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, capturing playful photos and a boomerang dance. She also notes the festive November market stalls, high‑performance cars on the streets, and the overall atmosphere of a cheap‑and‑cheerful European getaway. The narrative circles back to the present, where at age 50+ she reflects on holding an EU passport and hopes to return to Europe more easily. The video ends with an invitation for viewer comments.
Chapters
So this clip is about my trip to Paris, and when I checked out exactly when I went to Paris, it was like nearly 10 years ago, okay? I don't know if you can see that, 18th to then 20th of November, uh, 2016, so I was, uh, 40+ at that particular stage. I'm 50 now, 50+ now. And I remember this particular trip from recollection over 10 years ago, or nearly 10 years ago, when we actually went via coach from London Victoria. And that was a long trip, but it was a sort of cheap and cheerful trip to Paris. We went Via coach, as I say, and it took, I think, probably about 4+ hours to get to the destination so we could actually get through the underground, through the Channel Tunnel. And we— it was nice because it was a case of going through, you know, through London, streets of London, so you could actually see, you know, passing by all of the different scenery across London and then the motorway and etc., etc. So it was really nice to actually do that long trip, but it was just really nice to do that. And I had been to actually France many, many years ago before the 2016 trip, and, um, but I had never been to Paris where we We got on the, you know, Channel Tunnel through to France, and it was nighttime at that particular time. And it was on the outskirts of Paris that we had this hotel booked. The hotel booked was, you know, I think it was like a 3-star hotel, and we were sharing rooms. It was a group of us, group of girls. And we slept and then got up really early and got on the What was I think they call it metro there in Paris? I think the same as they do in in Washington D.C. That was a completely different trip, but obviously, so we got on the underground or metro line, and on one of the lines it was that I think it was like a it looked like it was a Lena, the actual station. You might even know it there. In Paris. And so I took a picture of that one. I probably haven't got that one, a video of that, but it was a picture I took and it had, uh, it looked like Lena, then the name Lena, which is my name. And so I took a picture. We got off at, uh, I think, uh, the Eiffel Tower stop, and I can't remember what the name of the actual metro line was at that particular point. But anyway, Off there. I just remember from recollection, it's nearly 10 years ago, going up and around, going up the stairs to then be shown the Eiffel Tower. And it was just like such a shock to just see it just, just there. Took a number of different pictures and like sort of a boomerang type of shot of me doing some kind of dance kind of thing. And I'll probably show that at the end of this particular clip. But it was just so magnificent to see this structure, this engineering magnificent structure, and, you know, just taking pictures and actually doing this little dance thing. And then I just remember going to the Louvre and taking pictures there, and I had my finger on the Louvre and took a picture of it, so it just looked like this, like this finger coming down on the Louvre. and taking a picture of that. And yeah, just going around the streets of Paris and taking more pictures and, you know, going and seeing all this sort of high-performance cars racing up and down and just taking more pictures and just seeing part of Paris has an opportunity where you can actually, you know, go into the different stalls there, like it— like if you've ever been to the London South Bank. And there's just stalls, particularly at Christmas time, there's stalls there. And this was kind of like how it was in Paris because it was November time and it's leading up to sort of Christmas. So all of these stalls were out and went and had a look and stuff. And so yeah, it was just one of those trips that was a cheap and cheerful trip by coach. And yeah, so one of my many trips of going into Europe. But at that particular point, I actually wanted to point this out, I had one of these, which is an EU passport, and now I've got one of these. So hopefully soon we can go back to the, you know, the EU and I can actually go through really quickly, which is, which is how it was when we were going by coach. We could just go really quickly because you have one of these instead of one, instead of one of these. But yeah, I just thought I'd just I mentioned my trip to Paris and, uh, look forward to, um, seeing your comments.
