BOULOGNE

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Getting away from London at the weekend has become lately my favourite hobby.It doesn't really matter if it's a town a few hours away from the mad capital or a city in Europe where you can get only by flying or...in this case crossing the English Channel by ferry. All that really matters is getting away for the weekend.

Monika, my Slovak friend with whom I'm sharing a flat in Wimbledon has decided to tag along, so we joined a group of excited students on a promising trip to Boulogne.

Boulogne is a small fisherman town on the coast of France, very close to Calais. It took us ages to get there, although we left London from Shephard's Bush before sunrise. There were major delays on the way and as it happened, we also had the incredibly bad luck to miss our ferry-boat and had to wait another hour to get on board of the next one. It took over an hour to cross the English Channel aka La Manche by ferry, but we didn't really mind as we had time to enjoy the view and walk around aimlessly and do some shopping.

Boulogne is small and cute and definitively bears that typical French provincial air. It was a delight to go into shops just to practice my French. I took my short French experience very seriously and popped into several souvenir shops just to ask for prices and exclaim 'très jolie, je l'aime beaucoup' pointing at different painted sailor mini-statues or other miniature souvenirs. I didn't end up buying much, but loved listening to the très chic French accent that I sometimes miss.

The weather was on the other hand miserable and managed to spoil my fun day out. Windy is an understatement, the weather was quite blowy and turbulent and got tempestuous as it got darker. When we got to Boulogne I felt just a bit cold and shivery,but by the time we entered a cosy French bistro to have lunch, I was literally frozen to the bone.

I guess it's true what they say No pain, no gain. In the end, it was undeniably worth while, as our mission had been accomplished: getting away from London!

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