Working Saturday... #assistant
As we are known to speak very bad English ;) , it is common that travel agencies ask for 'a French-speaking assistant' to help groups of tourists once they arrive in the crazy busy London...
In my case, the client was NOVO.travel. They sent this group of 48 'Potter-philers' for one. unique. single. day in London. Indeed ! These people travelled the whole night to Calais by coach, then took the ferry to cross the Channel and again were droved to London to a 4-hour visit of the Warner Bro Studio…
I thought I was going to have a hard time giving instructions to kids and teenagers fans… but actually most of them were on their 30s !
Anyway, here are the main lines of the day :
7h30 : I left home to take the train and join the meeting point, Belvedere Road, the street right behind the London Eye. Note : To go to the London Eye, you need to stop at Westminster on the District and Circle Line. Out of the station, you can’t miss this huge wheel…
8h15-30 : Arrival of the participants. I had a list of 48 but 5 were missing… We waited until 9 o’clock and the British driver told me that it was the maximum he could wait ! Note : On the road to the studios, he explained me that from his long experience, the French groups are the worse as they are never on time… ( Sorry Sir !)
10h15 : It took us a little bit more than an hour to arrive to the place but people were so tired from their ‘difficult night’ on the coach that they slept. Once there, I exchanged a voucher, given by my company, to issue the tickets. A lady from the ticket office explained me some details and I translated to the group (Well, I tried!) so that they could go into the studio on their own, at their pace…
11h : Everyone was on the queue but always looking at me like little kids… I replied to the last questions like 'Do you think I can enter with my Swiss army knife ?...' Oh my god, when I saw that, I took it in my bag and told that we are not in America but still the British are very concerned about safety measures !
*Once everybody was inside, I finally decided to get in (yes, with the knife hahaha) as I had 5 extra tickets. My opinion ? Well, I’m not a huge fan of Harry Potter, I have not even seen all the movies but it’s quite impressive to see the authentic equipment, gadgets, costumes and some settings… It’s worth doing it but for £33 I’m not really sure… I got it for free so I was happy !
13h30-45 : I started to look for the coach and nothing… The coach company contracted for this day was named Seaward so I was waiting for another similar white vehicle. However, without notice, on the same day, they subcontracted another company called Dhillon of London… Thanks god, I asked all the coach drivers and sorted out rapidly the situation…
14H15 : 15 minutes late but with the 43 Frenchies (counted 3 times !) on board, we went back to London ! Another question time – 'What can we do for the remaining time? Which bus takes us to Camden? How much is a ticket? Where can we exchange money? Etc.'
16h : Of course, we had to face another problem otherwise It wouldn’t have been funny… In fact, there was a demonstration against austerity in central London, so the traffic was just horrific! But at the end, we reached the meeting point and the group seemed quite satisfied of the tour “Merci Mademoiselle! Nice to meet you et à la prochaine !”
The entrance to the magic Harry Potter world !