We had been promised a pelting with eggs from students supporting France’s great strike. It was almost a disappointment to step off the first Eurostar from St Pancras International and walk out of the Gare du Nord entirely unmolested.

In fact, the only visible protest of the day was at St Pancras itself, where a gentle and very English knot of campaigners were wheeling their bikes among the crowd to draw attention to the lack of cycle parking at the £800 million restored station.

Cycle racks were not the only thing missing at London’s new international terminus yesterday. Passengers arriving to board the first commercial service at 12.30 found the coffee bar still under construction and the business lounge firmly closed. Business passengers were compensated with a goody bag containing an apple, water, a tiny bottle of champagne and a voucher for a case of wine. The unfortunates of standard class had to make do with free bottles of smoothie handed out by a team of young women.

The very first train, a VIP special, pulled out of the Barlow train shed on the dot of 11.01, accompanied by a small orchestra playing Elgar and a large crowd of onlookers taking photographs. Only in a British station could the announcer then come on the public address system with a warning that flash photography was not permitted on the platforms. Some people have no sense of occasion.

Business was brisk at the champagne bar, the only food and drink outlet yet functioning, and the £7.50 charged for a glass of the cheapest bubbly seemed no deterrent to drinking before the sun was over the yardarm.

John Harper, 76, from St Germans, Cornwall, was admiring the renovated station almost as much as his £59 return ticket. “I last left this station in 1954 on my way to Tilbury and a ship to Australia. It was a grubby old hole then. I think it’s rather splendid now.”

At exactly 12.28, the first fare-paying passengers pulled out past waiting trains bound for Luton, Leicester and other more mundane destinations. However fast it may be, shaving 20 minutes off the journey to Paris, the new rail link between St Pancras and north Kent could never be described as a scenic route. Within a minute it plunges into six miles of tunnel under the back gardens of East London to emerge at Stratford station, which will serve the 2012 Olympics. But there is no view of the site; the line remains stubbornly in a deep cutting before burrowing into the next tunnel.

When daylight is restored, you find yourself among the badlands of Dagenham Dock, compared with which the old route from Waterloo was a constant delight of familiar landmarks.

Emerging from the Thames tunnel at Dartford, the train made a brief unscheduled stop so that Eurostar could show off the deserted platforms of its new Ebbsfleet station: “verray ’andy”, the French train conductor informed us, “for le Bluewater shopping”.

Over on the other side, we stopped at Lille to enjoy another scene of concrete desolation. This was no help to a train that has to travel at 186mph to arrive on time. It didn’t, pulling up to its French buffers five minutes late. But at least it was moving: much of France’s railway system was not.

Russell Blackmore, from Maida Vale, northwest London, a regular traveller on Eurostar, was impressed by St Pancras. Over lunch of salmon fish pie and a small bottle of Bordeaux, he said: “It’s a massive improvement — a better station and much quicker.”

There were no celebrations on arrival at the Gare du Nord, just some passengers having their picture taken with the driver holding a small Union Jack, and an elderly lady struggling off the train with two enormous balloons in celebration of her 70th birthday.