Despite best efforts, finding fault with the Eurostar experience is impossible.
I still find it barely credible that there could be a railway line from England to mainland Europe. To my generation (and let's not go there, please), it's about as likely as a bus service between Australia and New Zealand. But as I travel on the Eurostar high-speed train from St Pancras International station in London to Brussels Gare du Midi in Belgium - try as I might - I can't fault it.
As my train leaves in the morning, I have to spend the previous evening near the station, and the most affordable hotel that I can find is the Travelodge London Kings Cross Royal Scot, which offers rooms for about $180 a night.
At its deepest point, the Channel Tunnel is 75 metres below sea bed and 115 metres below sea level: I arrive at the Travelodge with expectations significantly lower than that. It seems to be the cheapest hotel in all of central London.
But it turns out to be faultlessly clean and quiet, with decent-sized rooms and comfortable beds. I wouldn't want to spend a holiday there, but it's fine for one night.
Emboldened, I try my luck at one of the vaguely insalubrious-looking Indian restaurants nearby. Once again, I'm ambushed by good fortune. My $20 chicken chilli bayang at the Indian Lounge - where every second customer is hemmed in by their suitcase or backpack - is freshly cooked, un-greasy, tangy and sweet.
I wonder if I might win the trifecta and find a nice spot to have a beer. I figure I just need to keep my hopes down - if I don't get stabbed, it's a success. I drift into what turns out to be an 1840s pub repurposed as a cocktail bar, The Racketeer. The maitre d' says there are no tables, but offers me a drink if I don't mind standing.
If I'd have wanted to stand, I'd have gone to a bus stop. I walk out and, incredibly, a customer follows me into the street and offers me his stool at the bar. I almost burst into tears. And it's a great bar.
The next morning, I walk five minutes to St Pancras station, armed with a Standard-class return ticket to Brussels bought three weeks in advance for 107 Euros, which is about $165. The magnificently elaborate neo-Gothic architecture of the station lifts my heart. St Pancras, after all, is Harry Potter's starting point for the Hogwarts Express. When the station was refurbished in 2012, a Platform 9 3/4 was added, somewhat counterintuitively, between Platforms 8 and 9. Visitors to the adjacent Harry Potter Shop queue to have their photograph taken pushing a half-trolley full of half-luggage into a brick wall.
St Pancras is crowded with restaurants, cafes, boutiques and bars, like a 19th-century airport or a Westfield for witches. I arrive 90 minutes early but it's Saturday and there are virtually no business travellers, so it only takes me about 10 minutes to clear customs and immigration - and I even get an old-school stamp in my passport. Immigration formalities for the UK and the European Union both take place at the station of departure.
In the waiting area, there is a Pret A Manger sandwich shop and a licensed Station Pantry. Certain American Express cardholders are supposed to have access to the Business Premier lounge, but beware - they won't let you in if the card is issued in Australia (the lounge on the Belgian side is more accommodating).
When boarding is called, half the population of the room rises like a Mexican wave.
To travellers of an age when they no longer enjoy standing up in bars, it's like magic
The 750-seater train is 400 metres long and carries about twice as many passengers as a Boeing 747. The seat pitch in Standard class is 82.5 centimetres, slightly more than the average jumbo jet. The service leaves at 11am, but the ride feels more like a party than a journey. A couple of tables enjoy champagne breakfasts from the buffet car. Several blokes emerge with a can of Belgian Leffe beer in each hand (and, in one fabric-defying case, each hip pocket). I buy a hamburger, which is not terrible, and a beer, which I don't drink.
The train reaches a maximum speed of 300 kilometres per hour, although it feels to be cruising through the Kent countryside at a relaxed pace, past fields and farmhouses and the odd village church. It enters the 50.45-kilometre Channel Tunnel without fanfare, and crosses the border between England and France under water.
There is nothing much to see in the tunnel except darkness. After 55 minutes, I'm sailing past Calais into a Normandy farmscape that mirrors rural England but for stone barns and silos. It takes only one hour and 22 minutes to reach the French city of Lille. Less than half an hour later, I'm alongside a canal on the way into Brussels. The journey is over in two hours. To British-born travellers of an age when they no longer enjoy standing up in bars, it's like magic.
I can't think of a single advantage of flying from London to Eurostar's three European Union destinations of France, Belgium or the Netherlands, but here are seven reasons to take the train over the plane:
You can get up and walk around whenever you like.
You can eat and drink whenever you like.
You can enjoy a whole bottle of champagne at your seat.
The heating is set to a constant temperature, with no attempt to bake you to sleep or freeze you awake.
There are enough bathrooms for everyone.
You "land" in the heart of a city, not the middle of an airport.
The scenery is more interesting than clouds (except when you're in a tunnel).