098 - sun 06 aug - london/dover/calais

we left london early in the morning, and took a lot of photos as we walked to the tube station, through highbury park, which was a walk we'd done at least every day for the last six weeks so we felt like we needed to take some snaps to remember it by. from victoria station we caught the bus to dover. at this point we were lightly packed - the plan was to catch the ferry across to calais, where our french car was to be picked up the following day. and then tomorrow we would ferry back and drive into london to pick up the rest of our camping gear from our former (up until today) housemates before moving on.

after a quick wander around dover we boarded the ferry. i didn't really know what to expect, and definitely was surprised to feel a little bit wobbly on the boat. but some wines quickly steadied (or further unsteadied, to good effect) my innards.

it didn't take long to reach calais. it was genuinely cool arriving on a big boat, its the first time i've ever done that. in calais we headed for a hotel that our housemates had recommended, a very no frills place just outside of the town's central district. it was certainly no frills, but suited us just fine.

in fact, as we headed back out to spend the evening in calais we found ourselves thinking that it was the whole town, not just the 'bansai' hotel, that was kind of cheap. the touristy dodginess of the dover-calais ferry (my friend wally once described the spirit of tasmania as a 'floating tabaret') was to be expected, but i don't think i expected that the dodginess would carry over onto the shore. maybe i didn't expect my first impression of france to be a dodgy, rundown tourist trap, but calais definitely stank. my apologies to our calais readers. yes i am forming an impression of a whole town based on staying there less than 24 hours. i'm a tourist! thats what i do!

we found ourselves somewhere to eat, a place that sold itself as selling authentic cous cous dishes... suz was mainly interested in getting mussels and fries, which is what she got, and i ordered some authentic cous cous, which turned out to be something i could have whacked together myself. it was the 2-minute noodles of cous cous. but hey whatever. suz's mussels were exciting.

we went back to bansai and to our hotel room which was lit up by the street light directly outside our window.

click here for photos