Parlez Francais!

Since I can't concentrate long enough to actually get anywhere with my homework, I'll write to you instead.

My most important lesson this weekend: impulse travelling guarantees nothing more than an adventure.

Rewind to last week Thursday, when Danielle, Hillary, Karen (three friends from Eau Claire) decided we wanted to go somewhere over the weekend, since almost all of the British students go home on Fridays. I had always wanted to see the White Cliffs of Dover, if only to climb to the top and sing The Decemberists' We Both Go Down Together, which was inspired by the massive cliffs. So we bought train tickets and decided to combine the trip with a visit to France via the English Channel.

So after class on Friday, we hopped on a train through London to Dover on the southeastern tip of England. Three hours later, we arrived in Dover and found directions to the ferry from the cutest and most stereotypically British bartender possible. It turns out the bus stop to the ferry was directly next to the pub. Stupid Americans. ;)

By 6:30 p.m. we had bought our tickets for the ferry to Calais, France, and happily settled in with some snacks to wait. By a stroke of ridiculous luck (and by ridiculous, I mean bad), there were terrible storms on the Channel that night -- they even made the U.S. news! We ended up waiting at the Port of Dover, eating chocolate and playing elementary school games like MASH and the Question Game to pass the time for another four hours, while our ferry delayed its trip again and again. By 11 p.m., they informed us we wouldn't arrive in Calais until well after midnight, and none of us were too thrilled about finding a hotel in a foreign country with minimal language skills... all in the middle of the night.

We ended up finding a hotel in Dover, and unfortunately, by the next morning the winds were still way too strong to climb the cliffs or tour Dover Castle at the top. As a compromise, we decided to take the next ferry to Calais and see the cliffs from the boat. They were still absolutely beautiful! And I sang the song on the boat. The Channel itself is also much more impressive than I expected. It was hard to imagine how many brave swimmers have crossed it -- the first in 1875 in less than 24 hours!

We arrived in Calais at 1 p.m. and with only the afternoon to spare, we wandered the city only to discover why our guidebook hadn't had much to say about Calais. Though we didn't find the expected touristy city (because it's a popular port), we did find they have excellent food and stopped for soup and baguettes, cheese and wine, French pastries and of course, chocolat chaud (hot chocolate)! Though the French townspeople were pretty tolerant (Karen speaks pretty decent French), we found the British are much more open and friendly, at least to us. After a few hours of touring, though, we had seen most of the city and were exhausted.

We collapsed and slept on the ferry, only to wake up with mild seasickness from the rough Channel waves. We had never been so excited to get back on the train, and headed back to Winchester! The trip itself was fairly unpredictable and turned out defying most of our original plans, but it was still a lot of fun to spend time with each other and do some exploring.