This was the last day of our odyssey around Europe and it started with a taxi ride to the Channel Ferry. As usual these ports are very hard to find if you have not been there before and the published maps are not helpful because much of the area is private. We were glad we did not try to walk. P & O put us in a bus where we saw a ferry which looked like ours but turned out not to be.
Ours was called the Pride of Canterbury and was very comfortable. We bagged seats at the front window and were able to watch the white cliffs of Dover grow as we landed right next to them. That was another first for us. The sunscreened windows acted like rose tinted glasses. La vie en rose.
We needed a taxi to get to Dover Station and then we used three trains to get to Southampton at 4:30pm, changing at Ashford and Brighton. It has taken us 32 hours to get from Berlin to here without using the uninspiring Eurostar and without passing Go in London. Those London monopoly stations are too difficult to link up as you pass through. Our connections following the English south coast were quite simple. The trains were fairly slow but the scenery was interesting. Do you think the Top Gear crew could equal 32 hours from Berlin in a car using the ferry?
We are ready for a quieter travel experience on the QM2. We picked up the fancy clothes that we left at the hotel in May. After three months they were buried in the store room but they did not lose them, so we are set to party again.
As expected, the weather in England was cool, cloudy and occasionally wet. It is a welcome change from the 30C+ we had nearly every day for the last month. There was a story in the German newspaper Bild about the railway tracks in Frankfurt buckling on Friday and disrupting timetables. Our train was late in Frankfurt yesterday. Some towns in Germany have had record high temperatures.
We celebrated our last night in England with a meal of fish and chips in the hotel restaurant.
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