23 January 1977 - Sunday
After breakfast, packing, and checkout, we took a cab to the Gare du Nord (North Station). (Actually, Alice walked a couple of blocks to find a cab and brought it back to our hotel. The manager didn’t particularly want to call one.)


At the station, our confusion with the Gallic mentality mounted. There were three windows for information; at one, when I asked if he spoke English, he waved me to another. There after standing in line for five minutes or so, I discovered no one there spoke English. Then a girl came up who did, and she told us to go to another area, to the ticket window, where another English speaker was located.
What we were trying to do was to go to Calais or somewhere, to get off the train to go to England tomorrow. There seemed few alternatives to going all the way to London, which we didn’t want to do. After getting only confused information from the ticket girl, whose English was limited (or whose mentality was), we decided to board the train and see what happened.
A sign at the gate said that England-bound passengers, especially those with Eurail-Passes, must have tickets for the boat. But the guard let us through with the Eurail-passes.
Meanwhile, we had run into two girls from Australia whom we had seen checking out of our hotel. They were in roughly the same position as us -- wanting to go to Calais, but not all the way to London. They decided, though, to go ahead and get ferry tickets, so we did too.
We had arrived at the station at around 11:00 for a 12:27 train, but it was fortunate we allowed so much lead time. When we got on the train it was already filling up, and we got in the compartment with our Australian friends (we never got their names). Later, a man, also an Australian joined us, filling up the compartment.
(The man, as we found out, was a Lt. Colonel in the Australian Army. He told us of near riots in the train station in Milan where we had been Thursday, two days after we were there. The unrest, he thought, came from some political trial close to conclusion. Such information helps to account for all the police we saw in Milan and also for the groups of young people we saw putting on some kind of demonstration.)
Near our compartment were two other children. Susanna gradually started playing with them. Their names are Dougal (about 7) and Nancy (nearly 6), Australians.
When we got to Calais, no one around us seemed to know what to do. The colonel thought we should stay on the train, that it would go right on board the ferry. Others were putting on coats to get off . It turned out that everyone gets off the train and onto the boat. It’s quite a long walk to the boat, when you have luggage, and you through several passport or customs people on the way.


The ferry itself is quite large (our boat was the Vortigern) Our places were close to those of the Australian kids. Susanna, Dougal, and I spent a good bit of the trip out on the deck. On the back, out of the wind, it was not unpleasant[1].
On the boat we went through passport inspection. Expecting difficulty, I took along the letter from Dean Habbe explaining my salary, etc. It must have been right, because he gave us a 6-month approval.
It was dark by the time we got to Folkestone (in England). There is a time change here as you cross the channel. You set your watch back one hour.
Getting off the boat at Folkestone was not easy. Susanna was tired and not really helpful. The ramp for getting off the boat had large cleats which caused our luggage rack to tip. Since we had already gone through passport examination, there was no hold up there, and customs waved us right through (the luggage rack kept tipping over on the rough pavement).
We were following the crowd, most of whom were going on to London. We asked someone who seemed to be directing traffic and he said the train was non-stop to London, and we wanted to go to Canterbury. He said take a taxi to Central Station. We found one waiting nearby and decided to try that.
Our driver was a perfectly charming little man who seemed quite concerned about our welfare. He said the train for Dover left at 6:00 (it was now about 5:15) and there we would catch another train to Canterbury. He, however, would drive us to Canterbury for £5, a distance of 16 miles. We took him up on it. Along the way, he asked if we had lodging. All we had were some suggestions from Europe on $10 a Day. He stopped at a phone box which seemed to materialize out of the wilderness and called for us to hold a room at the Courtney Guest House (our suggestion). He also called his wife to tell her he would be home late. We arrived and moved in--a large room with three single beds and a bathroom/W.C. right next door. Our bay window overlooks London Road and St. Dunstan’s Church and Cemetery. I paid the driver £5 + 1.10 Tip (all my loose money). He seemed satisfied.
We strolled down the street looking for a restaurant. Canterbury seems quite small[2], and compared to Paris, very peaceful. We walked a half mile and probably got nearly halfway into the town. It was especially quiet on Sunday night, except for motorcycles racing up and down the street. We found a restaurant called The Weavers and had two specials. Not too cheap, but good. The maitre d’ was French and one of the waiters only spoke French. We had fun trying to converse with him, although we thought we had left France behind for a while.
We all had baths and got to bed quite early.
Getting to England after traveling the continent is for us like getting home. It is refreshing to hear English spoken and to see signs in English. Cultural differences between Britain and the U.S. appear minimal to our present perspective. The strangest adjustment is the left-hand driving. Our first experience was on the highway, and it is a little frightening to see cars coming at us on the wrong side. We had to remember which way to look when we walked.
Today we should enter London.
[1] Also, in the parking area for cars, a large garage with room for running about since there were no cars. [2] There is a smell of coal smoke all over town.
Comments