Advertisement
Published: February 28th 2012
This weekend we stayed in town to try and save some of our pennies. Here's what we did:
Thursday night: It's the season for the Italian/Latin Carnivale, where people dress up in beautiful costumes and party just before Lent begins (40 days before Easter). So in honour of the tradition, Mike's school (CTLS) held a Carnivale party. We decided to stray a bit from the traditional elegant masks and wear masks of famous people. Mike was where's Waldo (or in the UK, Where's Wally? or in French, Ou est Charlie?), and Elysia dressed as a female Mr. Bean. She really wanted to wear the face of the queen, but Mike thought that was tacky (although later at the party we found people dressed as the entire royal family, so we weren't the only famous people there). Mike had fun sneaking into people's photos without their knowledge.
Friday: The day started off more slowly, considering the festivities of the night before. We met with some of Mike's classmates for lunch in Kensington, and went on to the Victoria and Albert museum. We really wanted to go to the Science Museum or Natural History museum, but because it's spring break (half-term)
The Masquerade Party
Hannah, Aloysius and Fuad (L-R) didn't even know Waldo snuck into their picture! Can you find him?for the kids here, the line ups were blocks long! I guess the Victoria museum isn't as interesting to kids, as it was much less busy. Elysia didn't really want to go to this one, because she had been earlier in the week and didn't like it so much, but we didn't have much of a choice given the numbers of people! We still had fun.
Saturday: We took the bus to Dover (2.5 hours) to see the Dover Castle and the famous white cliffs. We were really fortunate that it wasn't raining at first, but it caught up to us later in the day. We first had a bit of a walk through the town and then made our way by foot up one of the white cliffs (fortuntely we didn't climb the face... there were stairs) to the Dover Castle which sat upon it. Dover castle was instrumental for Operation Dynamo during world war 2, when the British and French soldiers had to be evacuated from the French coastal town of Dunkirk, as they were cornered by the Germans. From the castle, the evacuation was coordinated over 10 days, and they managed to save 340,000 soldiers through
these efforts. Hidden deep within the rock below the castle are tunnels where this operation was masterminded, the control centre of the efforts. They also used these tunnels as protection during the world war 2 attacks, and even later were prepared to use them as a nuclear shelter, however, they realized that the cliffs are made of chalk, which can be easily penetrated by gas or nuclear radiation.
Beneath the castle was also a hospital that treated many of the wounded during WW2. We didn't have enough time to go here though unfortunately. Our main reason for visiting was to see the cliffs. We also walked around the grounds of the castle, and stopped to take a photo of the beautiful surrounding countryside. It was a clear day, and you could see France on the horizon (it is only 22 miles by ferry from Dover, the narrowest part of the English channel). Unfortunately the extremely high winds did not mix with our camera on a tripod, so the camera tumbled off the wall onto the ground. Luckily, only the outer casing of the lens was cracked, while the lens itself remain unscathed. In fact, we were really lucky that
Saturday: Welcome to Dover
View of the Castle from the Town the wind wasn't blowing in the opposite direction, blowing the camera off the outer wall of the castle onto the land moat below. Phew!!
After that incident, we explored the Great Tower, where the royalty would have lived. It was different than other castles we've visited because we were able to explore almost the entire castle, through different passageways and different floors. They even decorated some of the rooms to look like they would have when the castle was inhabited during Henry the Second's rein during the twelfth century.
From the top of the castle, we saw the famous cliffs from the photos across a valley, so we decided to walk to check them out. We decided to follow a roadway down from one cliff, across some countryside and up the back side of the other range of cliffs. From there, we walked into the national park and hiked across the cliffs and followed trails down the sides of it. As you can imagine, the view from the cliffs was amazing. It was still bright at this point, so you could see all the way to France, and all the water around. The port of Dover was directly
below us, where the ferries leave for Calais, France. When it started raining, we didn't know how long the walk was to get back to the town, so we started to hike back. It started pouring when we reached town, and we ducked into a pub to take advantage of a "two meals for 5.95 pounds" deal. Then we headed home.
Sunday: We went for a nice run along the canals and Regent's park in the morning. In the afternoon, we did a quick visit to the British Museum to see the Rosetta stone, on our way for "high tea" at the Hotel Russell. We got a Groupon deal for two for the price of one for high tea, so decided to take part in the British tradition. We first were served Champagne, and then tea, and then given the three layered tray which had finger sandwiches on the bottom, pastries in the middle and scones on the top. Yum yum! We finished the day off with a walk through London ending at Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 26; dbt: 0.1005s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
