Old Blighty: Dover to London

After Paris we went to the UK. We thought we’d do it the traditional way; taking a ferry from Calais over to Dover and admiring the famous White Cliffs of Dover as we came in. Unfortunately we didn’t think about what time of day would be a good time to do this so we made the crossing late in the day which meant that we were heading straight into the sun for the whole trip and ended up seeing the less famous black cliffs of Dover, the black Dover Castle and the black English countryside.

Not seeing the White Cliffs of Dover was a bit of a disappointment, but we had no idea we would have a much bigger disappointment coming up. Somehow we (or more accurately I) had managed to book us a room at Fawlty Towers. When we first arrived the place looked abandoned, there was no one in the cafe (which was supposed to be open for lunch and dinner) and no reception. We rang the doorbell a few times before the owner eventually turned up. First up he told us not to drink the water. Our room was at the top of the building with a nice view over the busy highway and no curtains. The shower alternated between powerful blasts of scalding hot and dribbles of ice cold so it was useless. It was hot and stuffy in the room so we opened the window to let some fresh air in, the window only opened 2cm so it let none of the heat out but all of the noise in. There was no air conditioning or fan so we had to sleep with the window open. We were woken up nice and early from the traffic noise and bright sunlight that came into the room because we didn’t have curtains. We went down to have breakfast in the cafe and the conversation with the owner went like this:

Owner: We have toast for breakfast for you today.

Me: That’s OK I’ll just have some bread thanks.

Owner: We don’t have any bread.

Me: I don’t understand, how do you not have bread?

Owner: We don’t have bread, we have toast.

Luckily we were only there one night, we could not wait to get away from that place. It was only £50 but still not worth it.

We had a quick stop in Canterbury to see the old pretty medieval town and cathedral. And after this it was on to the big smoke of London.

One of the first things we did was see the Tower of London which is the old fortified castle that English kings used to live in and is now used to store the Crown Jewels. You can go see them, as well as plenty of other shiny shiny crowns, plates, swords and more. The amount of giant diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and gold (so much gold) is absolutely mind boggling. Unfortunately you weren’t allowed to take photos so no pretty pictures here to look at.

At the centre of the Tower of London is the White Tower which was the original castle and now holds old weapons and suits of armour, including armour from famous kings like Henry VIII.

Another very interesting place is Westminster Abbey. For nearly 1000 years every single English/British monarch has been crowned here and they still use the original Coronation Chair which has been used for coronations for the last 700 years. It’s also a very popular burial place for royalty, writers, scientists and many other important people in Britain’s history. It’s interesting going around and spotting names of famous people. So Issac Newton has a pretty fancy sculpture above his tomb, and not far away Charles Darwin has a very basic stone slab in the floor with just his name and dates. And for people who hated studying certain writers (like Thomas Hardy) at school you can go stomp on their graves to get revenge.

We really liked London, it’s a bit like Paris in that it’s a pretty big place with lots to see. So we’re going to have to come back again.