Holy Moly!

What a crazy last few days. We are heading back to Germany today, but stopped into an internet cafe to check mail, bank balance (gulp) and write a bit in the blog, before we head back across the pond to mainland Europe, Germany, and jobs. (sigh)

We headed out of Hanau about 10:30 Sunday night, drove though Germany, a bit of Belgium, very nearthe Amsterdam border ( I was sooooooo tempted to stop in *wink*) and then through a bit of France to the town of Calais, on the English channel. We got there about 4 I think, and ferry across did not leave until 6:30, so we queued(sp) up with the other drivers in a line to get on, then walked around a bit, hung out in the car, etc. Jess was really nervous about the whole boat thing. I told her not to be, because the English Channel is very shallow, not like a real ocean, etc.

The only thing I was worried about was if there would be enough movement to get seasick. I had only been out on a boat in the ocean twice before, once in the Florida Keys when we went snorkeling, and once whale watching in California. THAT trip I got really seasick.

Finally at about 6:15 everyone started driving onto this HUGE ship. I have pictures, but they will have to be posted after I get home. So they SQUEEZED this three lanes of cars onto the ship, I was the first on in the middle line,and he stopped us so there was NO room on my side to get out, and Jess' door could open between two cars. i thought this weird until I remembered we were driving a car with the steering on the wrong side for England, so usually the other side is where the driver got out. SOOOOO I got to crawl over the shift knob, with visions of knocking it out, the car jumping into gear and the whole first 12 cars dumping into the English Channel. (Hey, what can I say, I have an active imagination. LOL)

So all parked and out of the car, we followed the line of people upstairs. I wanted to go outside to take a look around, and we found the back deck and Jess sat down, begging me not to go near the rail, hang onto my camera, etc. LOL It was funny. I have a picture of her sort of hunched over in a seat, scared to death.

I LOVED it out there, we had picked the perfect time to cross over, the sun was just coming up, seagulls doing their thing and making there noise, you could see out into the Channel from the back of the boat. GOD!!! This is life! I am scared I will never be able to go back to a so called "normal" life ever, after all of this. (thank god)

Finally the boats engines started churning, right under us.. You could just feel the boat vibrating, and see the water behind churning. All the seagull and some tern like birds landed in the water behind. It looked like the boats engines were churning up the fish, so all the birds were hanging out getting an easy breakfast..

I just couldn't stop smiling. Here were were, on the edge of France, with our car on a ferry, waiting to sail across to England. AUUGHHH.. I could barely stand it..

So we back out of the port, then as the ferry started turning around, we headed in to check out the rest of the ship.

It was huge, four decks high, and huge restauarnt area, a coffee shop in the front with windows along the whole front. That was as close as you could get to being outside along the front. There was a duty free store, mostly liquer, a huge cosmetics store, along botht side were windows and nice plish seats to sit in, or sleep in. While we were up front with a couple of cups of coffee, there were several members of a sporting team, still in uniform with the coch snoring like crazy.LOL

The whole journey across the channel took about 75 minutes, and then you could start to see England! It looked like sandy dunes with green gross on had been scooped downword so as if someone had taked a spoon and scooped them. They were high,but looked more like sand from far away. As we got closer we saw a big castel, etc.

People started heading down to their cars so we also did. We docked, the front went down and we all started driving out. NOW I would get to see what driving on the wrong side of the road was going to be like!!

Well, not to be rude, but I have to get my car out of parking, and we need to head out. I will write more tongiht when we get home (hopefully) Hang in there, hope you all are well!!!