Day Four

Crossing the Channel and on to Paris

(I almost subtitled this "Invading France," in respect to our unruliness, but I thought that might be in poor taste. I like France.)

We left London early and boarded our coaches for Dover to the southeast. The buses drove onto the ferry and we got off to hang out. I was doped up with Dramamine because I've had some problems with motion sickness in the past, but it was fine this time. I'm highly glad we took the ferry and not the tunnel. I'm not copasetic with really long tunnels, especially not ones underwater. I didn't used to mind, but then I started thinking about water pressure and things like that.

There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see

Dover is known for a few things. One is the ferry crossing/Chunnel; another is that many swimmers across the English Channel leave from or arrive in Dover. Both of the previous are because Dover is one of the places in England closest to France. In good weather you can see England from France and vice versa; and during the wars people in southern England could easily hear explosions on the Continent. The other thing is the white cliffs. The cliffs are white because they're made of chalk--although they and the sky and the water were pretty grey-looking when we were there.

The crossing went fine. The bad part was that we were too late for breakfast but too early for lunch, but I bought some candy bars (four for 99p) and a Fanta. Soon thereafter we got back on our buses and rolled out. We stopped at a rest stop to wait for one of the other buses and got some food, including honest-to-goodness frites.

Not many people were impressed with the outskirts of Paris--there were a few comparisons to Tijuana, which I can neither confirm nor deny, never having been to Mexico--it can't have been worse than the Bronx.

We ate dinner at Restaurant le Saulnier, where we had quiche lorraine, chicken cordon bleu, potatoes, and crème caramel. It was just as good as one would expect from a Parisian restaurant. At our hotel 45 minutes away we had an orientation meeting before bed.

It doesn't seem like we did a lot, and admittedly I slept a while on the bus. But bracing sea air is not to be scoffed at. And we ended the day in the City of Lights.

EDIT: At the time I wrote this, I didn't remember exactly what day one important story happened, but a check of another journal said it was today. When we were eating in Restaurant le Saulnier some of my close group were acting goofy--laughing and tapping on their glasses with silverware. Apparently such behavior was not acceptable, because the local coordinator came over and scolded us, saying, among other things, "This is a nice French restaurant!" We simmered down, but not without cracking up. For the rest of the trip we would turn to each other at random times and say, "This is a nice French restaurant!" and it was always good for a laugh.

Tomorrow: café life, a concert, et le Musée du Louvre