It all started on a boat... sort of.
The incident leading to the photo wasn't the highlight of our Easter weekend, which is what I'll chronicle in this post. Since we couldn't fit our proper holiday (Italy-blog post to come) into four days, we decided to take an easy and 'cheap' trip. It's been on Adam's bucket list for some time to take the car, fondly known to us as Chauncey, on the ferry across the British channel to France. For him, it was something about driving the car on the wrong side of the car, but the right side of the road that was appealing. I don't drive over here, unless driving Adam to the emergency room (I'll get to that), so I didn't fully understand the appeal, but I heard 'boat' and I was in. So, we picked a country we'd not been to, took the car on the boat, and headed for Luxembourg. I have to admit, it was a cool experience. We spent the night at the port the previous night and walked the White Cliffs of Dover. This travel option is a big money saver for groups traveling together. You pay one price for the car regardless of how many people are in the vehicle. Families of four can get to France for less than what it would cost you for one train/plane ticket.
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| Cliffs of Dover |
The route to Luxembourg City conveniently took us near the champagne region of France, so we made a quick stop in Epernay, home of many of the famous wineries, and we stopped to visit with Dom. Surprisingly, they don't just hand out sips of the $100+ bottles of champagne, but you can tour and taste from the barrels of their sister bubbles Moet & Chandon. Here you walk through cellars that were built to impress Napoleon and wander through caverns with wet walls and endless bottles. After grabbing some macaroons, cheese and bread (tip-never leave France without these essentials), we continued our road trip towards Luxembourg.
We didn't know much about the city/country... scratch that... we knew nothing, and were a bit concerned when we pulled up to our hotel. The 'city centre' isn't picturesque. We felt safe, but that part of town doesn't do the area justice. For dinner we made our way down to a more historic district, The Grund, which is along the lower section of the city wall. Afterwards we found a pub with crazy friendly locals and discovered our current favorite beer (we've since discovered most Belgian beers are amazing). The following morning we took a tour through the city walls which were very cool (albeit dark, wet, narrow and terrifying for me) and walked our way through the city. Up to this point, we were really enjoying our trip. Luxembourg is a business hub for the EU which means English is spoken most places, but everything does tend to shut down during non-business hours. As you approach the next part of the story, keep in mind that it's now Easter Sunday.
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| The Grund |
Around 1pm we started walking back to the hotel. It took us a little longer than expected as we were having trouble finding somewhere open for lunch. We'd already packed our car and planned to get a head start as we intended to drive to Lille, France to spend the night, breaking up the trip and making it easy to catch the ferry early Monday morning. We got to our parking spot - a parallel spot on the street as was indicated acceptable on weekends by the hotel concierge - and no Chauncey. I begin to do what I believe was a mild version of hyperventilating. Adam stays calm, as he typically does, and we ask the hotel clerk what he thinks happened (a different clerk than we dealt with the prior day). This clerk confidently tells us the car has likely been towed as it was in a no parking zone and the city is extremely strict. Rather than argue with him at that moment, we rushed up the street to the police station where we were informed the car had in fact been towed, and was locked away until the following day at 8am, because it was, after all, Easter and the tow company closed early. After assuring us there was nothing they could do, and kindly ignoring the fully-grown sobbing adult woman in the room, the police gave us the info of where to retrieve our car in the morning. We went back to our hotel, which continued to take no blame for directing us on where to inappropriately park, paid for another room they fortunately had available, and remained dejectedly in our room until first thing the following morning.
At this point, we realized we would miss our ferry, so we paid to reschedule it for the afternoon trip which we could make if we timed everything perfectly. Upon arrival at the tow garage, we met 4 other foreign couples/families whose cars had also been towed - they hailed from Norway, the Netherlands and Germany. I felt less sorry for myself hearing their stories - they had animals they'd traveled with, medications and treatments they needed to get to and much larger problems than my own. We begrudgingly paid the 300 Euros and fled the country as fast as we could. We arrived to Calais just in time for our rescheduled ferry, only to learn our original ferry had yet to even leave due to rough seas.
So, the aforementioned photo is of us in the queue for a ferry, where we sat in our car for 4 hours waiting on a boat. We made it back to Birmingham around midnight and pretty much fell into bed since we had to work the next day. It wasn't funny at all at the time, but we laugh now looking back and realizing how fortunate we've been traveling as much as we do. I have friends who've lost passports, wallets and precious valuables. We lost some cash, but were safe and sound and now have a crazy story to tell.
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| On the ferry home #overit |
In case you're wondering (for the faint of heart, don't look at the photo below), in May Adam cut his leg on the wooden stairs in our house. He needed 16 stitches. So we've now experienced the National Healthcare System (NHS)! NHS is cool because it's free - I've come to see the benefits of such, but the A&E (Accident & Emergency = the ER) was nuts - we spent 6 hours in an insanely crowded hospital and at one point were told Adam might need surgery... SURGERY... for a cut. It was a deep cut, but come on. Oh, and if you ask him what happened, you'll get some story of him being trampled while running with the bulls in Pamplona, where we've never been (insert eye rolling emoji here).
Till next time!
J & A
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