Thursday September 12 2008
We got up in the dark at 4:30 in the morning to catch the 8am ferry to France. Good news was that that meant it felt like only 11:30pm at home! The drive to the ferry was uneventful, and we went over the pretty Dartford bridge in the dark. By the time we were in Dover, though, I was cheerfully taking photos of the White Cliffs.
The ferry ride to France was pretty uneventful. I discovered that our ferry was actually taking us to Dunkirque, not Calais, because it was cheaper. So even though Dunkirque and Calais are only about 5 minutes away from each other by car, it added an extra half-hour onto the ferry ride. So the ride was a solid two hours. The one funny thing on the ferry was that Nick and I were eavesdropping on a random American woman talking to a British woman on the ferry. At one point the American woman mentioned "freeways" and both Nick and the British woman started laughing. Apparently they think "freeway" is a funny word.
When we got to Dunkirque at 11am French time, I mostly just kept telling Nick, "Driveontherightdriveontherightdriveontheright" while playing with my iPod. We got one of those radio tuner things for the iPod, so I was having a great time being DJ. There were a lot of windmills, but also some pollution:
I also spent some time attempting to decipher French road signs, which were typically done in symbols, which was way more confusing then French words would have been. At one point, we came across an animated sign that indicated that because of construction ahead, we'd have to merge down to two lanes. There were literally orange lights on the black background showing us exactly how to do it, Frogger-style (how appropriate!). Another time, though, the road sign appeared to simply indicate "exploding cars":
When we got to the crazy Paris ring-road, the Périphérique, Nick was going to need extra help with checking his giant blind-spots on my side of the car. I fell asleep.
During other parts of the car ride, we often talked about songs on my iPod. I particularly liked when an Avril Lavigne song came on. Nick said "oh, I have that CD!" He admitted that not only did he have it, he paid L5 (or about $10) for it. And he quite liked it. And got insulted when I found that funny.
Additionally, Nick likes to use, and misuse, the word "hippie" a lot. But because he doesn't really quite know about America or where things come from, when a Grateful Dead song came on and I mentioned something about it to him, he said "They're a hippie band?!" He was shocked. Poor Nick. Maybe I'll teach him about Phish someday.
Eventually we got to the campsite around 4 in the afternoon. Nick makes me go in to help him speak French at reception, but luckily he's been to this campsite a number of times before, and pretty much knows the protocol. We set up the tents in the infamous tent-in-a-puddle site, and then head out for afternoon bouldering.
For bouldering, we went to the 95.2 area (name comes from it's elevation in meters). Neither of us climbed all that well, and I was reminded of many of my issues with the over-poffed footholds on Fontainebleau.
After about an hour and a half, though, dark clouds started to roll in, and we decided to head back to the campground. We made it back completely dry, but as we (well, Nick) started to cook dinner the rain started. We ended up eating in the front seats of the car. Went to bed to the sound of steady rain, with me unconvinced about how dry Nick's tent would actually stay.
So that was our first day! A note about the photos -- eventually I'll get and higher resolution ones (and probably a lot more) up on FB, and I'll post a link here when I do. So hold out for that.
Edit about the photos: Turns out that the high-res ones did upload, after all -- so you can see the ones I've posted here better just by clicking on them. So I should amend my statement to say that I'll eventually get more, but lower resolution, ones up on FB.
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