Well, really, a minibus on a train.
On 24 October I joined a Britbound tour to Boulogne in France with a side trip to Wimereux.
It was an early morning start, 8am meeting Regent Street, Piccadilly and a bit of a drive down to Folkestone to get on the train that takes cars, buses etc under the channel. It was quite exciting really, but was just like going on a ferry, except for the being able to leave the car deck part. Not the best for travel sickness as you're moving but there is no horizon to look at, thankfully fellow traveller Mel shared her travel sickness bands with me.
The city of Boulogne is just a little down from Calais and is the biggest port of France. There is an old town and a new town. The old town area has a chateau and cathedral and little cobbled streets. It was a Sunday, so there was no shops open and it was all a bit quiet. I like the feel of old parts of cities, stone buildings, walls and all that cuteness, sadly my camera decided to die so my photographs are limited.
We had lunch at a restaurant, of course frog's legs and snails were our entree. Since I'd earlier tried snails, I had some of the frog's legs. It all just tastes very garlicy, that's not a word, but that is just how it is.
The side trip to Wimereux was great. It is a little place, with a big beach and cute colourful houses and amazingly, some shops were open. We managed to visit every patisserie that we saw, pain au chocolat, brioche and macaroons were what I bought, others were slightly more extravagant and our guide bought us all a chocolate from a boutique chocolate shop.
On the way home we stopped off at the shop that is just before the train. I had a good amount of Euros left which I splashed out on 4 bottles of wine, it actually wasn't cheap at all really, so not too exciting. Two French wines, one from Chile and, ahem, a Villa Maria Riesling.
