Well, so I went to Calais for a day. It only takes 2 hrs drive to Dover, then 1.5 hrs of ferry, then 5 min to anywhere in the town in Calais. Both Dover and Calais ports are relaxed place, I can arrive 15 min before the boarding time to get on the ferry, no X-ray-all-your-possessions (including your dog) security checks to go through, it's a different world to the whole aviation side of today. (They still do tight passport control, though.)
There is no WiFi on board, you may or may not get British or French phone signal depending on the location, but for some time you are actually out of all reaches, and that's surreal to me.
I love the idea that I spend merely 25 quid or so, and 4 hrs later am driving in a different continent. I guess it's more appealing to people who grew up in islands, like myself.
I love the food, there, too. It costs far, far less, yet they simply have better fish. Wines are not cheap in restaurants, but are superb. On top of it all, they never look at me funny when I dine alone (or maybe they are saying things in French but at least I don't have to have "Oh, are you dining alone then, can I join you?" chit-chat with waiters because I don't speak a word of French.)
I was fished to death, and I had my first ever Sancerre in the restaurant called "Oh Mouettes!". I had a fish platter to start with, followed by a Dover sole, then some house cakes. All great. Good service. Shame about looping background music, which I think was the same CD played in the last restaurant I ate in Calais. (It has instrumental versions of ABBA, Queen, and stuff like that, probably to be tourist friendly.)
The Sancerre was very, very nice. I think I prefer this to Chablis when having shellfish.
Then I went to wine supermarkets (plural!) and bought wines to stock up. The only bad thing about the day was when I was loading up my car with bottles after bottles this old Brit guy snuck up to me, and said,
"Are you taking all these wines back to Thailand then?"
I ignored him, so he went on asking where I was from,
"Korea? Philippines?"
He just kept naming all the Asian countries he could remember. I turned around and said,
"Hey, man, I'm American. Whatya wanna know?"
He left without saying a word. (I am not American, BTW, used to live in MD for a while though.) I hate people like that, they think they are getting clever by categorizing people by their looks, showing what they think is the friendliness towards foreigners, and all they are becoming is the sear ignorance. I have been in this country for half of my life, and I am as naturalized as your favourite takeaways, and yet you have to label me as something other than just a person. I am getting over this after so many years of experiencing their reception against us immigrants, but I do still get ticked off time to time.
Anyway, yeah, that bit was just 2 minutes out of one long lovely day. It by no means ruined my day. It's just a bad timing, that was, because I was partly doing this trip to wipe off memories I made there with my ex, who came with me on day trips twice, and he was exactly the same way about foreigners. He thought he was being generous and broad minded, and all these time he was excluding me as an outsider and did not accept me into his country, which in my eyes was offensive and f-in
cretinous.
I walked down the street alone where me and him took our first picture together, went pass the restaurant we dined, got lost alone on the same road we got lost, and thought a bit about him. We had fantastic trips together, but days actually contain some seriously bad memories about him. Something he said, or did, I still can't shake off the disbelief of experiencing them on those days. Although I was a little bit sad, and was angry at those and other memories of him, the conclusion of it all was that "Thank God, he is gone." And I carried on having a nice day.
Will definitely do it again, by myself, in a few months. The end.
