The white cliffs of Dover

As I mentioned earlier we arrived at the Dover port via private bus. It seemed as soon as we all saw the ship and gathered our luggage we lost all focus and purpose. The only thing we had on our minds was the Constellation and how soon we could be on that beautiful ship, we didn’t have a long wait.

I would guess we were onboard and in our cabin #7175 in less than twenty minutes. After a quick look around we walked out on the balcony and saw what we had missed coming in, the white cliffs of Dover. It was easy to see how they came by the name; the land and seascape were gorgeous, as you will see when viewing the photos. We dropped the carry on bags and went out to the first order of business, pizza. Pretty sure the pizza man forgot to set the timer as those first few were burnt to a crisp, oh well, BURGERS! And fries, and ice cream and a lifeboat drill at 4:15.

Sail a way was right at five o'clock, we were officially on our way to Le Havre, France: one hundred thirty three nautical miles away.

When we went to bed Saturday night we set the clocks forward one-hour. I guess France and England do not agree on much. We were in port at 7 and lots of people had been up, had breakfast and were ready to go. La Havre is a commercial port; a rather industrial type city and pretty well shut down, this being Sunday. However, this is the port stop for Paris, a couple of hours away and we were here until eleven tonight.

Wanda and I wanted to see the Normandy coast and the countryside. Around 9 we decided to walk into town (bypassing the Celebrity "bus to town", $16.00 each) and catch a train to Rouen. We really did TRY to find the train station. Between advice from fellow passengers, trying to read a map, and our lousy French I guess we only walked four miles out of our way. I tried to make to best of this although Wanda reminded me it looked like we were in west Oakland (don’t ask). We finally found the station, managed to get change for the pay toilet and found out the next train out was at 1330 that’s 1:30pm for us Americans. We did not want to hang out for two hours so chalked it up to a bad day and started back to the ship. I now understand the stories about the rude Americans and how we are disliked in places. I’m a pretty laid back guy but I found myself getting angry because "no one spoke ENGLISH!" and I was getting frustrated. That lasted about two minutes, why the heck should THEY accommodate me?

On the way back we tried to rationalize our situation. We didn’t make plans, it was Sunday, there was dog poop on the sidewalk, La Havre really was a nice, fun, interesting place. Here we were, in France, and we were dodging dog poop and making up lies, and on we walked.

Our first day and we crapped (almost literally) out. We had already shown our sea pass to security and were through the gate, almost on the gangway when I spotted a visitor center. Honestly it WAS NOT there when we left several hours before. I bet a bunch of little men with hammers and saws built that thing while we were running around town. What the heck, it was worth a visit.

Wow, we bought some bottled water and spotted a sign with several listings. We discovered we could take a taxicab to Honfleur a charming coastal town. The driver took us, waited there two hours and drove us back for a set fee. The cab was a brand new Peugeot, the driver French and the ride, fast. The funny thing was when we arrived he gave me his cell phone number. In his poor English and my bad French we realized we should call him if we had "any problems." How the hell we would have communicated over the phone is still a mystery?

 http://www.grape-nutz.com/travel/euro05/honfleur1.html
Take a minute a look at this web site. We loved this place, We talked about spending a week at one of the small hotels, waking in the morning and walking downstairs for fresh rolls and coffee. We were so happy we went into that visitor center, there was no issue with the time or price. Heck, we even told them we didn’t have many Euros and needed to go to an ATM while in town.

We returned to the ship around four or so. It was pretty empty, as so many folks had gone into Paris. The dining room was open seating that night but I think we had sushi and some pasta. We eventually got ready for Monday, which was the port of Falmouth/Cornwall, England that was two hundred eleven nautical miles away. Oh, we set our clocks BACK an hour, leaving France for England.