France to the UK
We've made an astounding discovery, the biggest hole on Earth!
Calais!
The place is terrible!
We drove the hire car to the depot at the channel tunnel in Calais. Well, supposedly 'at', more like 'in the vague vicinity of'. Normally you'd expect hire car places to be right next to train stations and airports. We had to get a taxi to the station and it wasn't a short trip. Bah!
We then discovered, to our horror that not only do Calais taxis not take credit cards (which wasn't _that_ big a shock) but that there were no ATMs in the Calais tunnel train station nor in the first two places our helpful taxi driver drove us to so that we could draw cash to pay him! Stupid Calais!
The train trip to the UK was kinda cool but not cheap, still not entirely sure why we didn't fly, but oh well.
We arrived in London (which, incidentally, definitely isn't in the running for World's Most Picturesque City) just after rush-hour on Friday. The trains were ok but the pubs were packed. We met a friend of Matt's for an attempted couple of social drinks but had to bail because it was just too crowded (esp. with luggage to lug around).
We took the train out to the area in which we're staying and found a much quieter English pub at which to have a little food and some drinks. The place wasn't packed but was fairly busy because England was playing South Africa in World Cup rugby. Incidentally England were completely and thoroughly crushed.
Oddly enough at the pub were a group of about 6 youngish guys with _long_ hair talking bollocks about movies and their artistic worth or something. I'm still unsure whether they were just friends with similar fashion or part of some long-haired-git subculture.
Once the rugby was over, a bunch of Matt's mates, who'd been watching the game elsewhere, turned up to join us at the pub for an hour or two.
From there it was up the road to the flat we'll be staying at for the next week or so. Looks shabby on the outside (like a lot of ex-tenement but gentrified buildings in London seem to do) but is quite nice on the inside, if small.
I downloaded Firefox Portable Edition, which I'm running from my phone-cum-usb-mass-storage-device so that I can browse furry sites and such without leaving odd traces on their machine. I've rediscovered the fact that my phone is a very slow storage device.
That's all for the moment.
Calais!
The place is terrible!
We drove the hire car to the depot at the channel tunnel in Calais. Well, supposedly 'at', more like 'in the vague vicinity of'. Normally you'd expect hire car places to be right next to train stations and airports. We had to get a taxi to the station and it wasn't a short trip. Bah!
We then discovered, to our horror that not only do Calais taxis not take credit cards (which wasn't _that_ big a shock) but that there were no ATMs in the Calais tunnel train station nor in the first two places our helpful taxi driver drove us to so that we could draw cash to pay him! Stupid Calais!
The train trip to the UK was kinda cool but not cheap, still not entirely sure why we didn't fly, but oh well.
We arrived in London (which, incidentally, definitely isn't in the running for World's Most Picturesque City) just after rush-hour on Friday. The trains were ok but the pubs were packed. We met a friend of Matt's for an attempted couple of social drinks but had to bail because it was just too crowded (esp. with luggage to lug around).
We took the train out to the area in which we're staying and found a much quieter English pub at which to have a little food and some drinks. The place wasn't packed but was fairly busy because England was playing South Africa in World Cup rugby. Incidentally England were completely and thoroughly crushed.
Oddly enough at the pub were a group of about 6 youngish guys with _long_ hair talking bollocks about movies and their artistic worth or something. I'm still unsure whether they were just friends with similar fashion or part of some long-haired-git subculture.
Once the rugby was over, a bunch of Matt's mates, who'd been watching the game elsewhere, turned up to join us at the pub for an hour or two.
From there it was up the road to the flat we'll be staying at for the next week or so. Looks shabby on the outside (like a lot of ex-tenement but gentrified buildings in London seem to do) but is quite nice on the inside, if small.
I downloaded Firefox Portable Edition, which I'm running from my phone-cum-usb-mass-storage-device so that I can browse furry sites and such without leaving odd traces on their machine. I've rediscovered the fact that my phone is a very slow storage device.
That's all for the moment.