Supper in Dover

(I've made these images too small, so they might look a little weird.)

We decided to take a look at the castle. When we had arrived, the landlord had told us that the last entry was right about then (4 PM). This turned out to be wrong -- we had till 5 o'clock, but didn't know it and so missed it. Anyway, there's nothing worth seeing if you can't go right in.

We then decided to see if it was a "brisk 10-minute walk" as our landlord had said. NO. Maybe a brisk 40-minute walk along the windy sea shore. Another taxi tomorrow morning.

We saw a sign for a pub along the back street and gave it a try. Strange but nice.

Our B&B in Dover

We started to walk to the B&B, got up the hill and decided we didn't really know where it was. Decided to take a taxi. Back down the hill (by steps this time). A nice place with a bathroom light that comes on automatically when you enter (as well as the "extractor"). So light and noise in the middle of the night tonight. A huge room. Picture to follow. For our 9:15 AM sailiong tomorrow, we have to check in at 8:30. Breakfast at 7:30 and a quick taxi ride.

Dover

We took the train from Windsor to Dover. There are two stations in Windsor: Eton & Central, and Riverside. We went to Eton & Central, the one we had arrived at, but of course it was the wrong one. You could do it, of course (no one ever says you can't do something), but we would have had to change at Slough (rhymes with "cow") after 5 minutes, and then in London, travel by underground from Paddington to Waterloo and catch another train. Or, we could walk to the Riverside station and get a train that would take us directly into Waterloo, and then we would (simply) have to walk to East Waterloo station ("Up the escalator, that's right , sir") and catch another train. We did the latter. Total trip about 4 hours.

Our Room in London

Tiny. Cramped. Only 1 (tiny) towel each. Bathroom and shower half a landing away. £78 ($125) a night! A very un-generous place.

I wish we had taken a picture of Matt's scrambled eggs breakfasts: small breast-shaped (and -sized) mounds of slightly pink (puréed?) eggs. He thought the fried eggs were even worse. I didn't mind them.

Of course, they brought the toast out far enough ahead of the rest of the meal that it would be nice and cold by the time the eggs arrived.

We came to know the 10-minute walk between it and Victoria Station like the backs of our hands.

First (Mis-)Steps in London

On the way from Heathrow to our hotel in London. It felt like 1 o'clock in the morning to me. In fact it was about 9 pm London time and 4 pm our body time. When we got to Paddington Station, we looked for Paddington (the bear) . . . . . no. We surfaced and then made the big mistake of asking for directions to our street (Ebury, pronounced E-bree). This resulted in our taking about 35 minutes to do what should have been a 10-minute walk. We got to know the neighbourhood well (better than most of the people we asked directions of). I should have had a better map and a better sense of direction. It felt like a mini-nightmare.