The check-out clerk at our hotel in London looked at us as if we were out of our minds. My wife Diane had just told her we planned to walk the mile and a quarter from our hotel at Russell Square to Waterloo International, the rail station where we would board the EuroStar to Paris through the Channel Tunnel.

Why were we walking? It was a Thursday morning in July, and the London Underground was shut down because of a strike. Thousands of subway drivers, station personnel and signalers walked out to protest the government's plan to privatize part of the subway system. Of course, this being Europe, Londoners were taking the strike in stride. The night before, as we disembarked from the last subway train with service from Piccadilly Circus to Russell Square, a station attendant was encouraging riders to take the next day off to avoid getting caught up in what was sure to be a chaotic day in the British capital.

If the tube strike caused chaos, Diane and I never found out. By 7:15 a.m., bags in tow, we had made the short trek to the station in about 30 minutes, even though the hotel clerk had estimated it would take much longer. Along the way, we passed red double-decker buses bursting at the rivets with riders. But we had a date with Paris, and we weren't taking any chances with buses or cabs. The night before I had called several cab companies to schedule a ride to the station, but after the third "we're fully booked" response, I concluded walking was our best option.

At Waterloo, with about an hour and a half to spare, we made our way to the international departures area and parked ourselves at a coffee shop for our morning dose of caffeine. The security check seemed rather laid-back. While security guards pulled random passengers aside, we were waved right through. I was pleased. Diane worried.

The waiting area at Waterloo is spacious and comfortable. It has ample seating for departing passengers, several snack bars and of course the ubiquitous gift shops. Our train was scheduled to leave at 8:52 a.m., so we had to hang out a while. Diane perused the gift shops while I pulled out my paperback, the 1,035-page Sarum: The Novel of England by Edward Rutherford.

It occurred to me that for two $120 roundtrip tickets, we would soon accomplish with little difficulty what the novel's prehistoric character Hwll could not: cross the English Channel. Hwll's ancestors had passed on tales of warm southern places where the ground was fertile and people lived in caves. However, by the time he reached the area now called Dover, Hwll and his family discovered to their dismay that what we now call England had broken off from the continent some time ago. Some 21 miles of treacherous waters now separated the island from the rest of what became known as Europe.

Estimates put the separation of Britain from the continent at about 10,000 years ago. Since then, it seems, humans have dreamt of linking the island back to the mainland. The Romans fantasized about it but contented themselves with crossing by boat. Serious talk of building a tunnel started as early as 1802, and construction actually began late in the 19th century. But the project soon was abandoned, though not forgotten. The tunnel concept started gaining popularity again in the late 1950s, and in 1973 Britain and France, the former mortal enemies who fought a 100 Year War, agreed to build the tunnel jointly. But work stopped again in 1975.

Three years later, the tunnel got the final go-ahead. Construction resumed in 1987 and the Channel Tunnel, known affectionately as "The Chunnel," opened in May 1994 at a whopping cost of $15 billion, more than three times the original estimate. The piles of rubble removed from the seabed to create the underwater passage increased the size of Britain by 90 acres.

Diane and Pedro Pereira at London's Tower Bridge.

At 8:30 a.m. on a Thursday in July, we boarded our Paris-bound train. We lined up at gate 21, and within minutes we found our seats. The 18-car EuroStar train is book-ended by two sleek yellow-nosed locomotives that provide the power necessary to reach speeds of 186 miles per hour for the three-hour London-to-Paris trajectory.

The train rolled out of Waterloo on time, and soon we were cruising past rows and rows of brick apartment buildings into suburbs interrupted by the greens of village parks and rugby and soccer fields. Our train window became a rolling collage of British scenery. We cruised past Brixton, Herne Hill, Wes Dulwich, Waitrose, Shortlands, Bromley South, occasionally passing weary-looking, red-and-blue commuter trains. Steeply pitched roofs. Graffiti-decorated walls. Overgrown shrubbery lining the tracks. Little village crossroads awakening to a gray July morning. Small backyards with plastic furniture and children's slides.

After about 20 minutes, buildings grew sparse, giving way to the lush-green rolling fields of Southern England punctuated with small woods and occasional stone buildings. Flocks of languid, plump, white and gray sheep went about their methodical grazing, indifferent to the zoom of the train.

Inside the train, the gray-and-yellow seats provided sturdy comfort. However, a metallic waste container about two inches wide protruding from below the window gets in the way of your leg. Overhead two shelves, a smaller lower one and a wider one closer to the ceiling, provide ample space for purses, knapsacks, shopping bags and briefcases. They are supplementary to the luggage compartments at the train entrances. The seatbacks have large metal trays that passengers may use as a workspace or dining table, or both.

At about 10:05, an announcer said, first in English and then in French, that we would enter the Channel Tunnel shortly. The train slowed as we passed the Cheriton Tunnel Terminal tollbooths, where motorists and truck drivers take their vehicles aboard a shuttle train for the crossing to France in about 35 minutes. As our train entered the Chunnel, it sped up to about 90 to 100 miles an hour. We were beginning to experience first-hand the meaning of "high-speed train."

However, our long mechanical serpent did not reach its top speed until after we pulled out of the channel, already in France. The crossing took barely 20 minutes. The Channel Tunnel is 31 miles long, 23 of which are underwater. The Chunnel descends to depths of about 150 feet, but in our seats, we hardly sensed the descent. As the train gained speed, the noise level remained very low and the ride smooth -- truly a far cry from the commuter trains I ride everyday in and out of New York.

Inside the Chunnel, there isn't much to see. Once you plunge inside, it gets as dark as midnight, a darkness barely broken every few seconds by faint flickers of light. These lights indicate cross-passage doors between the rail tunnels and a service tunnel. The Chunnel actually consists of three tubes, the outer ones containing the rails and the center one being a service passage for Channel Tunnel personnel and emergency vehicles.

Eurostar counter.

The EuroStar train emerges from the tunnel into a different time zone in the coastal town of Calais. EuroStar personnel advised us, first in French then in English, to set our watches ahead by an hour. Our train made a five-minute stop at Lille, a charming northern France medieval city that has grown into a shoppers' paradise. From there, we zipped through endless acres of agricultural fields and cow pastures, broken up by the occasional country village. Each village a visual echo of the others: a few dozen stone houses cozily arranged around large churches with imposing steeples.

Perhaps it had to do with our vantage point in the train, but Paris just seemed to happen upon us. One minute we were in the country side and the next minute the three domes of the Basilique du Sacre Couer appeared on the left-hand side of the train. And before Paris could fully sink into our senses, the train pulled into the Gare du Nord and we were disembarking. We were right on time. After a quick stop at a Bureau de Change, we towed our luggage to the subway station, which is connected to the rail terminal. Thirty minutes later we emerged on the other side of the city to walk two blocks to our hotel in the Fourteenth Arrondissement.

Three days later we were back at Gare du Nord for the trek back to London. It quickly became obvious that the Neoclassical 19th Century terminal wasn't built with comfort in mind. Seating is limited to a couple of small cafes and an inadequate number of rows in the departure lounge. We were allowed into the lounge only about 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Although we were scheduled to leave at 1 p.m., the train was late arriving from London. We left a half-hour late and lost another half-hour or so in transit, so we arrived in London an hour late. Scheduling a three-hour train ride for 1 p.m. wasn't the best choice, as we discovered. It is best to schedule train trips for early-morning departures so you'll have more time for sightseeing after arriving at your destination.

Despite the return trip delay, our experience riding the rails under the English Channel was pleasant and cost-effective. Using London as a starting point for European trips with multiple stops may seem counterintuitive, but considering the enormous number of flights in and out of the British capital daily, it makes sense. The EuroStar is an attractive, and arguably preferable, alternative to reaching other points of interest, such as Paris, EuroDisney, the French Alps and Brussels.

We've already started considering another Chunnel crossing. Hello, Brussels.