Calais, France

Calais – France

It was in March that we went to Calais – precisely March 6, 2010

The trip to Calais is certainly memorable as it was my last drive on Mercedes A180. Just few days before I returned the car in return for a brand new Audi A3, this trip as usual was unplanned. We only planned it an evening before. The inspiration or the reason to go to Calais was a suggestion by my colleague Navneet who had been there before. He also told me that there is a small hill standing on top of which you could see part of Dover. All fascinated, we searched for this hill without any more clues. Unfortunately we could not list it in any of the websites. We could hardly jot down any places of interest. So we decided to drive and find the place asking the local inhabitants about it.

So we set out as usual at 8am from home with Subhash and Swapna who were closer to our old house in Brussels. The route suggested by GPS was different to me as I never drove in that region of Brussels before. On our way near Oostende, we filled our car tank. It was indeed sunny. But the temperature was around 3°C and real feel of 1°C. You can imagine how cold it can be in the sea shore. We were unprepared for this cold in spite of weather forecast. We only wore normal jackets to beat the cold. Luckily we did carry woollen caps in our bag.

We reached the city centre and parked our car. While passing by my car’s mirror hit a man’s elbow and he yelled. He infact had parked partially on the road and partially on the pavement. Of course, I admit it was my mistake and that I should have bypassed him. But I was still afraid to go out of my lane and that he was blocking me. Anyways no damages made to anyone except my car mirror. It started swinging again. Least did I know that I could fix it myself and it was an adjustment of the mirror itself. I was just apprehensive of how much I would be fined when I return my car.

Not worrying too much about this, we just went around the city centre and enquired at the tourist information office on how to get to the sea.

I parked my car on the street off the main road where parking was free. We then strolled around. We walked towards the sea and saw that there was some parking there. We went around all the restaurants close by in search of vegetarian food. Unfortunately none of them had anything except salads. So we had to rely only on the Italian restaurant especially on pizza. We went to the Italian restaurant there. Believe me the pizza was so tasty. The macaroni with cheese prepared in Mediterranean style was so yummy. It almost matched Indian style of preparation. Subhash suggested us to try a tiramisu which is Italian desert. This restaurant had homemade tiramisu on the menu which was tempting us to try after the yummy main course. With our mouth watering we waited for the tiramisu. It was served cold and the taste still lingers on our tongue. Haven’t found so yummy tiramisu till now. Talking about the best ever food outside of Italy, we got out of the restaurant.

We came back and went in the car to the sea. As we got out of the car, we realized that the wind was so cold and was forceful enough of blowing us away with it. We walked only a few steps and felt we badly need our caps. Fortunately I had ‘em in my bag. We wore and went to the sea. The water was very cold and not inviting us to get into the waves. There were people with their sea-gliders on the sea. Wonder how they managed themselves. Then we thought of walking along the land stretch and go till the end.

As we walked along we saw a lot of people with their fish nets. They were fishing for fresh fish and perhaps getting ready for barbeque. Sometimes I feel how funny it is and sometimes I feel it is realistic to do one’s own job.

Well the constant cold breeze did not let us be there on the tip of the land for long and so we returned.

We then went to the city centre and looked around to do some shopping. There weren’t enough interesting offers and we only spent 30min.

We thought of buying a foldable cycle for Srikanth and decided to drive back before the shops in Belgium close on Saturday. So we came back to Brussels at around 6pm. That was a short day trip to Calais. Next time we go there, I am sure I will get the address of that hill J