Our driver was British and quite lively and his name is "Nick". He is from Ely, the place where we visited the cathedral. He leads an interesting life. First, he was an orphan and grew up in an orphanage in England. When he was older he joined the British army. a career he had for 29 years. During that time, he married a woman high in the ranks of the British police force. It turns out she had some abuse from her childhood that manifested some emotional and mental stability issues during their marriage. They divorced, but apparently she, with her rather influencial employment, was causing him difficulty (according to him). So, his army buddies convinced him to request to be sent to Manila, in the Philippines, to be with them and to be out of his ex's reach. So he did. He met his present wife there, a Philippine woman who runs a hotel in Manila, apparently a prestigious one. They now have a 6-month-old daughter, who he says changed his world, along with his wife. When we started our trip to Paris, it was his first day back from vacation in Manila after having visited his family for a week there. I asked him how often he gets to see them and he says he tries to get there as often as he can. He will be going sometime again in the next six weeks.
He has been a bus (they are called "coaches" in England) for 11 years and has driven all over Europe and in the Philippines too.
Despite Nick's obvious chauvinistic philosophy, I thought he was very knowledgeable and considerably entertaining during the bus tour.
The pictures below were at the ferry dock in Dover, on the southeast coast of England, where we crossed the English Channel to get to France.
This is a picture of the breakwater that protects the ferry dock area and leads out to the Channel. Unfortunately we didn't go through the Chunnel, the Channel tunnel that goes to Paris. The Chunnel offers access to France by bus (and cars I think) and high speed train. The train can take you to Paris in 2 hours. It took us about 12 hours from Mildenhall to Paris by bus. LOOOONNGG ride.
On the bus though a lady from Honduras, her husband and their daughter were travelling. The daughter is married to a member of the US Army and is biligual, but the lady and her husband spoke no English. Perfect opportunity to use my Spanish, as the lady sat just across the aisle from me on the ride over and her daughter sat next to her near the window. Starting out Chantelle and I were behind them, but there was a woman with a child who needed 2 seats together and the only ones left were individual seats, one up front behind Nick and the other next to the lady's husband, who was initially in the seat I ended up in. I offered up Chantelle's and my seats for the woman with the child and Chantelle went to the front and I sat next to the lady's husband. But then he gave up his seat so that Chantelle could sit next to me and he took the seat behind Nick (next to another woman who we befriended later on in the tour...you'll see pics of her, her name is Sharron).
This is the actual dock bay our ferry was in.
This beautiful seen is a shot of the famous White Cliffs of Dover. I have more on video I'll share later. In the center of the picture is Dover Castle. By the way this is a close up shot, it was much farther from our ferry than it appeared. Aren't the cliffs gorgeous.
Lots of seagulls followed us out to sea for quite a distance. And the ferry was huge. It had several restaurants, bars, a food court, shops and the one back even had a full arcade. There size is impressive. I wish I had gotten a picture of the ferry or one like it, but I didn't. Anyway, the seagulls would fly very close to the ferry, close enough to touch, although they would move out of reach if you tried to pet them. One of them took a piece of food from one of the passengers who held it out at arm's length.
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